Animation, Particles, and Dodging.

Animation, Particles, and Dodging.

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Posted by: Xenon.4537

Xenon.4537

I apologize in advance, but this is going to be a wall of text with a pretty academic discussion. I just need to get this off my chest.

Does anyone remember dungeons during beta? Anyone remember Kholer before they nerfed AC? Those were good times… I recall Anet talking about their intentions for combat pre-launch, saying they wanted gameplay to be very visual. They didn’t want people staring at UI bars. They wanted you reacting to things in the world and watching boss animations for cues.

But then Particle effects quickly became a problem that never got truly fixed. Anet has had to make compromises in game design. They have had to sacrifice their ideals in order to make gameplay practical.

Kholer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DWeC2LtL7I

At 0:25 you can see Kholer pull his sword back slowly with a white/black charge-up effect, just before sending out his grappling hooks. You are meant to see this visual cue and dodge appropriately, because the damage after being pulled in is usually fatal.

Dark Souls – Asylum Demon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHbUnaieRPc

At 0:22, and pretty much throughout the fight, you can see the boss pull his hammer back slowly before slamming it down. It is a clear visual indication that the boss is about to do something, and you should take appropriate measures to avoid damage.

These are examples of anticipation. One of the 12 principles of animation, it is an important element that lets the audience know that something is about to happen. In GW2 anticipation has become nonviable as a means to warn players.

*See my attached screenshot below when I reference “what GW2 has become.” *

Rather than continue to emphasize anticipation in animation as a means to telegraph attacks, Anet has implemented these neon-orange, super bright geometric shapes which are almost a complete rip off of Wildstar’s telegraphing system. Sure, Carbine didn’t invent colored geometric shapes, but that’s not the point of this thread. The point is to bring up discussion about the future visual quality of video games in general. It is my hope that Anet thinks twice about continuing the current trend.

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Posted by: Xenon.4537

Xenon.4537

So why did Anet do this? Almost certainly because of the massive amount of particle effects. Look at my screenshot again. Dungeons used to be a huge part of the game, but now we’ve moved in to the open world with massive zergs. Massive zergs = massive particles, particularly the burning condition. Guardians inflict blue burning; possibly the most egregious piece of visual clutter in the game. It fully masks the target’s avatar and makes it neigh impossible to read telegraphs, and renders the concept of anticipation useless. Zergs exacerbate this issue because with multiple guardians proccing the blue burn effect, you get a permanent blue fuzz-ball that can’t be read. Add multiple elementalist AoE and dozens of warriors in bulky armor, and you get a clusterfrakk that forces Anet to change the philosophy of their combat game design.

Solutions? I must confess I am low on suggestions here. One thought would be to remove the burning visual effect from all boss avatars. The burning condition icon on their health bar is enough.

Anet opted to start making bosses arbitrarily bigger. Scarlet appears over 3 times larger than the largest Norn during open world fights, because maybe if the boss avatar is bigger, the particle effects won’t wash it out so much. In my screen shot you might not realize that the holographic boss is standing there in the middle. You only see her legs because you are prompted to angle your camera down to see the orange markers, and she stands something like 40 feet high. There’s simply no way you would be able to anticipate any of her attacks without the orange circles. So why does she even have animations? Why aren’t we just fighting a big, stationary machine; some kind of monolithic computerized obelisk? Why pay animators to animate this model?

What am I really getting at? Compare what Kholer used to be. Compare what games like Dark Souls do with anticipation, and look at what GW2 has become. Do we really want this game to devolve into a colorful rendition of hopscotch? Do we want Avoid-the-orange-Wars-2? I really don’t think it would be that hard to implement world bosses that have attacks with anticipation just like the Asylum Demon. In fact the 3 new watchwork knight bosses have almost the same attack pattern as Kholer. They pull everyone in and follow up with a melee attack. Only, instead of having the watchwork knight pull her arm back, they bathe the ground for miles in Las Vegas Neon Glowing Orange. This simply isn’t the right direction, in my opinion. It makes the game look like crap. It clutters up the screen just as badly as having a multitude of addons like some other games. I fear the day when someone invents the GW2 equivalent of DBM.

Does anyone else feel just a little bit turned off by the orange markers, the huge bosses, and the focus on massive zerging? Am I the only one that remembers Anet talking about designing the gameplay primarily around 5 man content?

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Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419

IndigoSundown.5419

I remember ANet talking about large events with hundreds of players playing at once going well back before launch. However, the game’s architecture is not well designed to handle such events — between performance issues, overflow issues and particle blur. I find the technicolor dreamcoat approach to encounter design to be off-putting, and in fact avoid these events like the visual plague they are. The unfortunate part of current game direction for me is that very little is being added to the game that is not a massive herd event with migraine inducing particle blur.

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Posted by: Trice.4598

Trice.4598

Well, I agree animation need to be tone down, at least for other players.

But comparing with Dark souls was wrong. first, the size of the boss, second, it was a party boss vs a solo. Boss like Lupicus Giganticus have stronger cue since they are bigger.

World boss are a mess, I really appreciate the fact that they changed the AoE to those big orange circle it makes it a lot easier to see. You can’t really have 100 peoples attacking the same boss with hundred of different skill and expect to see clearly.

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Posted by: Heraldusluminare.2946

Heraldusluminare.2946

Hmm… I have to agree on this. If only with the culling option we were given another option to scale back the amount of spell effects displayed (minimum being the ability to see your own spell effects and enemy spell effects – although not sure how this would work in WvW though).

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Posted by: Mad Queen Malafide.7512

Mad Queen Malafide.7512

And I have to say, Kholer’s telegraph isn’t clear either. If you look at that video that the OP posted, you have to be real close to see it at all. And you won’t see it if there happens to be a pillar or some other object in between (but the attack does go through walls). The telegraph for Asylum Demon is far more clear. Plus, can anyone see the projectiles that Kholer throws in that video? I can hardly see them.

Is it fair to compare the telegraphs of Dark Souls (a single player game) with GW2 (an MMO)? Well, yes. For an MMO, clear telegraphs are far more important, because there is more visual clutter.

With the Scarlet battle, you have to tilt your camera down to watch the aoe rings. But there’s several other problems with this:

  • Some of her beam attacks do not have an aoe indicator. Probably a bug.
  • Some of her most devastating aoe attacks have no aoe ring or warning.
  • If you tilt the camera down to see the rings, the game deselects the hologram.
  • When looking down, target-closest refuses to select the giant hologram.
“Madness is just another way to view reality”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y)

(edited by Mad Queen Malafide.7512)

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Posted by: Izaya.2906

Izaya.2906

@op

I’ll give you a relatively common example. Try melee’ing TA up Malrona without reflects/aegis/vigor and all effects up.

Its kittening almost impossible to see the glow on her back for the AoE blast. I even find it easier to melee solo without vigor than to have vigor and 4 more people a cluttering it up with particle effects.

Tells are fine, but even for content designed for 5 players its a pain to see visual cues.

Also, when inside a relatively closed space, the camera zooms you in and you don’t notice you’re standing inside a red circle, so coloring the area altogether helps in those cases.

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Posted by: Lothirieth.3408

Lothirieth.3408

And I have to say, Kholer’s telegraph isn’t clear either. If you look at that video that the OP posted, you have to be real close to see it at all.

I completely disagree. I find it to be one of the most obvious in the game (as it should be considering it’s the first explorable dungeon) whether one is in melee or at range. He has quite the wind up.

Anyway, this is something that’s really been bothering me lately since I got a new PC and finally have good FPS. I’ve been able to see so much more, yet also see how muddled boss telegraphs become with the plethora of particle effects. My suggestion would be to allow us to turn them down or off. Being able to do would personally help me up my gameplay as I’d actually be able to see the bosses. One of the best examples to me is the Mossman. I feel I could do much more melee damage on him when I run level 49 fractals if I could actually see when he’s raising up his arms in the air to do his powerful attack. But often I can’t, so I’m forced to go ranged if I’d like to stay alive.

Then there’s the zerg content.. which is just.. well.. horrible. :P

But it really baffles me how ANet has made a game where watching mobs is important so that you can avoid damage, then they go and cover up the mobs with tons of flashy effects. It doesn’t quite make sense. And nor do I think these super bright orangey red circles are a good substitute. I think their base idea of boss telegraphs is great… just gotta clean up the visual mess from our attacks.

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Posted by: Dee Jay.2460

Dee Jay.2460

I also don’t like the focus on zerg content and think the OP makes a good point.

Zerg content just isn’t the most appealing or engaging form of content. Zerg content has to be simple, intuitive and not overly punishing to various classes or builds. Most zerg fights ask nothing more of their players than to auto-attack and dodge the odd attack.

It’s also frustrating at times because the player-base has become conditioned to laziness and ineptitude during zerg-content. Most people still wait for resurrections instead of waypointing and don’t remedy their mistakes even after dying for the 3rd of 4th time. Bad players have become too complacent to improve because they are so used to being carried.

And the mechanics themselves aren’t fun either.

Just look at the screenshot below and try and avoid the next incoming instant-gib attack.

It’s nice to see ANet experimenting with various ways to progress their game, but I don’t think zerg content is the right direction.

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Posted by: Sera.6539

Sera.6539

@op

I’ll give you a relatively common example. Try melee’ing TA up Malrona without reflects/aegis/vigor and all effects up.

Its kittening almost impossible to see the glow on her back for the AoE blast. I even find it easier to melee solo without vigor than to have vigor and 4 more people a cluttering it up with particle effects.

Tells are fine, but even for content designed for 5 players its a pain to see visual cues.

Also, when inside a relatively closed space, the camera zooms you in and you don’t notice you’re standing inside a red circle, so coloring the area altogether helps in those cases.

Malrona isn’t that difficult a boss to melee in a full party. It is a pain to see the visual cues, but Malrona only alternates between two moves really. The AoE, and poison spray. The timing may take awhile to learn, though.

Gelda Nebilim – Nagare [NGE] – Crystal Desert
http://youtube.com/user/Royblazer

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Posted by: Izaya.2906

Izaya.2906

@op

I’ll give you a relatively common example. Try melee’ing TA up Malrona without reflects/aegis/vigor and all effects up.

Its kittening almost impossible to see the glow on her back for the AoE blast. I even find it easier to melee solo without vigor than to have vigor and 4 more people a cluttering it up with particle effects.

Tells are fine, but even for content designed for 5 players its a pain to see visual cues.

Also, when inside a relatively closed space, the camera zooms you in and you don’t notice you’re standing inside a red circle, so coloring the area altogether helps in those cases.

Malrona isn’t that difficult a boss to melee in a full party. It is a pain to see the visual cues, but Malrona only alternates between two moves really. The AoE, and poison spray. The timing may take awhile to learn, though.

Yea I know, I’ve farmed thousands of gold in TA already and sometimes solo/duo it when bored.

My point was its so hard to see the glow with lots of additional uncessary particles(from the party) that you sometimes mistake burning(or whatever lights Malrona up) and waste a dodge(without vigor/endurance regen food/traits, you just have enough to not get hit once if you have aggro), not the difficulty of the encounter if you’re in a party.

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Posted by: Corpse Flakes.5369

Corpse Flakes.5369

I apologize in advance, but this is going to be a wall of text with a pretty academic discussion. I just need to get this off my chest.

Does anyone remember dungeons during beta? Anyone remember Kholer before they nerfed AC? Those were good times… I recall Anet talking about their intentions for combat pre-launch, saying they wanted gameplay to be very visual. They didn’t want people staring at UI bars. They wanted you reacting to things in the world and watching boss animations for cues.

But then Particle effects quickly became a problem that never got truly fixed. Anet has had to make compromises in game design. They have had to sacrifice their ideals in order to make gameplay practical.

Kholer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DWeC2LtL7I

At 0:25 you can see Kholer pull his sword back slowly with a white/black charge-up effect, just before sending out his grappling hooks. You are meant to see this visual cue and dodge appropriately, because the damage after being pulled in is usually fatal.

Dark Souls – Asylum Demon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHbUnaieRPc

At 0:22, and pretty much throughout the fight, you can see the boss pull his hammer back slowly before slamming it down. It is a clear visual indication that the boss is about to do something, and you should take appropriate measures to avoid damage.

These are examples of anticipation. One of the 12 principles of animation, it is an important element that lets the audience know that something is about to happen. In GW2 anticipation has become nonviable as a means to warn players.

*See my attached screenshot below when I reference “what GW2 has become.” *

Rather than continue to emphasize anticipation in animation as a means to telegraph attacks, Anet has implemented these neon-orange, super bright geometric shapes which are almost a complete rip off of Wildstar’s telegraphing system. Sure, Carbine didn’t invent colored geometric shapes, but that’s not the point of this thread. The point is to bring up discussion about the future visual quality of video games in general. It is my hope that Anet thinks twice about continuing the current trend.

Lupicus in the Arah dungeon (every explorable path) is a heavily visual fight. I recommend it if you’ve never done it.

-BelieveGate-

Anet please nerf Paper, Scissors is fine -Rock.

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Posted by: Xenon.4537

Xenon.4537

Lupicus in the Arah dungeon (every explorable path) is a heavily visual fight. I recommend it if you’ve never done it.

I’ve done Lupicus. He’s a great example and in retrospect I should have probably used him instead of Kholer in my example. Kholer came to mind first because I was thinking of the beta and how the design of the game has progressed since then.

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Posted by: perilisk.1874

perilisk.1874

In fact the 3 new watchwork knight bosses have almost the same attack pattern as Kholer. They pull everyone in and follow up with a melee attack. Only, instead of having the watchwork knight pull her arm back, they bathe the ground for miles in Las Vegas Neon Glowing Orange.

Funny you should mention the Knights. The telegraphs there seem to work a little differently than normal. For most of the game, you’re trained that if you see the red ring, you dodge ASAP. With the Extraction attack, leaving the area of the attack is infeasible, and if you dodge when you see the ring, the dodge will be over before the attack. To actually avoid the attack, you have to watch the animation. The orange ring there seems to function more as a nudge saying “hey, look at the boss, and get ready to dodge!”

Ceterum censeo Sentim Punicam esse delendam

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Posted by: Xenon.4537

Xenon.4537

Funny you should mention the Knights. The telegraphs there seem to work a little differently than normal. For most of the game, you’re trained that if you see the red ring, you dodge ASAP. With the Extraction attack, leaving the area of the attack is infeasible, and if you dodge when you see the ring, the dodge will be over before the attack. To actually avoid the attack, you have to watch the animation. The orange ring there seems to function more as a nudge saying “hey, look at the boss, and get ready to dodge!”

That’s an interesting take on it, however I sense it’s more of a timing bug. The orange circle is itself part of an animation. In video games the animation can often be technically separate from the damage application. I’m a game design student (trying to get in to my university’s character animation track) and I’ve recently been working with Unity and learning how animations are created and applied in a game engine.

The way it works, as I understand it so far, is whatever code package that handles the character behavior (enemy AI) tells it something like:

if player enters aggro range {
engage attack behavior and play “run” animation
}

if player in melee range {
call function attackMelee and play “attackMelee” animation
}

Hurray psuedocode! The point is there is code that handles the damage and technical aspects, and there’s code that tells the character to find and access an animation file that plays effectively like clicking play on a youtube video. You animate the character in another program like Maya, export/import it in to your game engine, and then use a tool to say which frames on the timeline correspond to the animation in question. The tool defines those frames as “idle” or “run” or “walk” or whatever, and the code references those names.

Soooo… What likely happened with the Knights is the animator set up the physical body to be animated with a certain timing, but the game designer set the orange circle to show up at a different time for whatever reason. It boils down to an oversight when polishing. They wanted the orange circle to appear well before the attack happened and have it disappear after, but botched the timing.

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Posted by: mooty.4560

mooty.4560

This issue is just yet another case of style over substance and perhaps fixing something that wasn’t broken(players watching UI). It can be painfully difficult to see animations and there are no skill meters to compensate. They should probably both add meters and reduce the amount of effects on the screen that obfuscate the view, but I expect neither change to come along.

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Posted by: technonewt.2907

technonewt.2907

Glad I’m not the only one who seems to have a problem with this. Most times I can’t see the enemy boss so I have have to guess when to dodge (most times its too soon or too late). A feature to turn off others graphical effects would be awesome. or maybe make the outline of enemies very distant no matter what kind of effect is going on. Here is me in todays Dwayna fight. Glad I play a range…

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Posted by: technonewt.2907

technonewt.2907

One more that shows off Dwayna’s divine glow

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Posted by: Cush.4063

Cush.4063

I agree, with less particle effects on the actual boss/enemy it would be much clearer. I also agree on the orange circles because it makes the game too easy. If the particle effects were toned down on the target and the aoe circles disapeared as long as their was an animation to the attack it would make it much more enjoyable as well as more difficult yet still be able to accomplish because of the animations.

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Posted by: goldenwing.8473

goldenwing.8473

@OP: thank you for starting a very worthy ( and constantly timely) discussion.

I remember one of Totalbiscuit’s videos from beta (Champion Boar fight in Queensdale) and the comment he made that has stuck with me ever since saying that the particle effects were (way) out of control and if ANet would just tone them down, the game would be so much better.

The particle effects are so bad in some of the dungeons, and particularly in Temple Events, that I might as well be playing blind.

I always figured that ANet (1) either had movie studio size monitors and could see through the particles easily (not understanding what the real customer’s experience was like) or (2) they decided the easiest way to crank up the difficulty of an event was not through scripting, but through inability to see mob telegraphs.

In any case:

the saddest thing for me is when I play my elementalist (main that is my joy), I feel guilty EVERYTIME I lay down a meteor shower in a world event because I KNOW I am adding to someone’s screen clutter.

I hate that.

BG: 52 alts, 29 lvl 80’s. They all look good, so I am done with the game: Oct 2014

(edited by goldenwing.8473)

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Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I think the screen clutter adds to balance issues as well.

I recently made a norn elementalist, near maximum height. I also recently discovered why it is that I never see anyone else play a norn elementalist of near maximum height. I can barely stay alive, despite being quite the champion-soloing dungeon-running veteran, doing obscene things like meleeing Hotw P1 on my zerker thief for the entire fight in pugs.

It took me a few fights, but I eventually discovered the reason why I’m face-planting so much is that I can’t see a darn thing. All of the elementalists attacks are so flashy, with so many particles and residual effects, that all of the actions of the enemy are masked behind walls of flame and glowing crystals. With the thief, all of my movements are subtle, and this leaves me free to observe enemies.

And this is with the effects LOD turned on. I can’t imagine how things would look with full effects. So I, too, cast my vote for the whole “there are way too many particles and effects in the game”. As for the bright red circles, those I don’t mind too much.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

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Posted by: Plok.5873

Plok.5873

Sometimes I feel like I’m fighting a flickering light bulb instead of a boss NPC. Technonewt’s greatly summarize the problem.
Oh, and on top of that I’m playing a small Asura, enforcing a Low-angle camera. Look up and miss the ground indicators, look down and see the NPC’s knees under the target UI. Look horizontally and pretty much miss both.

To improve the boss ability telegraphing I’d really like ANet to

  • add switch for the particle effects
  • normalize the camera height
  • let us move the target frame somewhere else.

Pretty please, I’ll buy more gems! ^.^

Pry Bar in yo’ face, You big disgrace / Box of Nails all over the place
Pet project: Outfit overhaul.

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Posted by: Dalanor.5387

Dalanor.5387

I share your feelings OP. As i often play on my guardian nowadays i must wait for the bosses “rest phase” (eg. when Archdiviner puts down the wells) to trigger Virtue of Justice (F1) so it will wear off when im need to watch for animations, beacuse of those blue flame particles i can’t see anything, tough i play on minimum graphics with effect LOD turned on.
Oh and those sweet Sigil of Flame effects on the holo fight. Thanks gods i don’t have epilepsy.

I would also ad in the problem with the camera. The whole camera thing is just weird as hell and moves in a really annoying way.

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Posted by: Spoj The Second.7680

Spoj The Second.7680

Particle effects do need to be toned down. Its a huge pain in the kitten on mossman when the guardian uses f1. Same goes for other small/human sized bosses. But also guardian f1 is over the top on any boss, its probably the worst culprit for over cluttering the screen with particle effects. Plenty of other abilities need toning down aswell though.

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Posted by: Dalanor.5387

Dalanor.5387

Particle effects do need to be toned down. Its a huge pain in the kitten on mossman when the guardian uses f1. Same goes for other small/human sized bosses. But also guardian f1 is over the top on any boss, its probably the worst culprit for over cluttering the screen with particle effects. Plenty of other abilities need toning down aswell though.

Yeah, Mossman and Archdivinier is my worst enemy in the game for the same reason.

Grawl shaman (the endboss) is hard to watch too due to how the camera can’t be zoomed out more so you need to watch it from a lower angle.

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Posted by: Lothirieth.3408

Lothirieth.3408

Yeah, Mossman and Archdivinier is my worst enemy in the game for the same reason.[/quote]

Mossman is really bad with an ele and guardian. :/ I’ve not had any problems with the Archdiviner though luckily.

Grawl shaman (the endboss) is hard to watch too due to how the camera can’t be zoomed out more so you need to watch it from a lower angle.

Yes that one is quite bad, especially if you have to use lower graphics settings. On my old PC I could rarely tell which way he was facing and of course the vitals covering half of him is super helpful as well… :/

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Posted by: deSade.9437

deSade.9437

A big problem they refuse to acknowledge/fix, and that is further exacerbated by their resolve in releasing, time after time, an endless tirade of super-massive fights, forcing zergs down everyone’s throat; all of this while they still completely ignore the “hard” (hah) instances, refusing to expand on them and the possibilities they bring – an example of this would be the modular structure of fractals.
You wanted raids? That’s what you got. Enjoy beating up that giant lightbulb of a boss.

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Posted by: Xenon.4537

Xenon.4537

One more that shows off Dwayna’s divine glow

What really gets me about this type of issue (in the image) is that it would take just as much work by the programmers to amend the script that displays particles on character models. It wouldn’t really take any more or less effort to turn off particles on boss models, than it would to set up this entire orange circle business.

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Posted by: Xenon.4537

Xenon.4537

  • let us move the target frame somewhere else.

I love this idea. I was under the impression that Anet planned to implement a similar modular UI like they had in GW1. They released a patch that allowed you to resize and move everything in the UI. GW2 needs this.

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Posted by: kaid.7695

kaid.7695

I was trying some of my melee characters vs the assault knights in lions arch but the constant up close strobing of so many particle effects makes seeing the telegraphing extremely difficult. I really wish there was a particle effect slider in the interface options so you could tone them down.

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Posted by: Xenon.4537

Xenon.4537

I was trying some of my melee characters vs the assault knights in lions arch but the constant up close strobing of so many particle effects makes seeing the telegraphing extremely difficult. I really wish there was a particle effect slider in the interface options so you could tone them down.

They have an option to reduce effects which should be turned on be default iirc, but it’s more of a behind the scenes dynamic culling system. It works wonders actually. Try turning it off and watch what happens. However, it isn’t enough. I believe the outright removal of “on fire” effects which cover the body is the only solution. As I said before, the condition icon on the health bar is enough to let us know the boss is taking burn damage.

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Posted by: Dalanor.5387

Dalanor.5387

I believe the outright removal of “on fire” effects which cover the body is the only solution. As I said before, the condition icon on the health bar is enough to let us know the boss is taking burn damage.

This. ^

However i have an idea why guardian virtue is different. To give visual feedback which enemy suffers from it, thus you know who will trigger Renewed Justice. Same with the normal Burning, it’s alone can deal a significant amount of damage.
I don’t know how positive effect it would have if “on fire” visuals are gone. :/