Guild Wars 2

(decided to completely rewrite my post because it was too long before)

So, this is a problem GW2 has had for a long time but I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t take it anymore. In such an action focused game that requires players to react quickly in battle in order to evade/survive attacks, it’s pretty ridiculous that it’s so hard to actually see the attacks we are supposed to be avoiding.

Not only is this game overrun with particle effects that are not only offensive to the eyeballs but obscure the enemies attacks (and sometimes entire enemies, making the player unaware they are even there) animations in general seem to have a lack of tells or inconsistent/ambiguous animations that confuse the player more than give them insight to exactly how the bad guy is going to bash their face in.

This isn’t so much a problem in PvP as it is in PvE, since a lot of effort has been put into player animations and they generally make sense (particle effects still need to go). Lots of enemies have confusing attacks, that either appear to be something totally different than it actually is or have no tell at all. For example, the final boss of the cliffside fractal can simply swing his hammer and hit enemies at range – even though it is just a hammer swing with no additional effects, even if you are twice his arms length away you will still get hit. Then there is the champion icebrood wolf for CoE explorable who has a very high damage attack with NO tell at all.

The lack of telegraphs in 90% of content forces the players to rely on the visual information from the animations to survive, information that is not correct. That means some players (depending on the playstyle) won’t be able to do some content reliably without help if they aren’t familiar with the encounter. Which kills a lot of the fun for me, I should be able to take what I’ve learned elseware in the game and apply it to new encounters but since I have no idea what to expect from my enemy it feels more like the game is just punishing me.

I wish I could do more endgame content, like soloing dungeons or PvPing more often but most of the time I just don’t want to deal with it. I think this really needs to be fixed for such an amazing combat system to really shine. Am I just part of a small percentage that have this problem or are others experiencing this?

Well WoW basically got around this issue by having massive bosses (that way the particle effects barely go up to their knees). Then again WoW also has things like deadly boss mods that makes raiding a fairly mindless effort in following giant on-screen prompts (but I guess that’s kinda like telegraphs?).
But in general this isn’t such a big issue since presently in game there is very little content that you need to watch for telegraphs (not standing in the fire sure, but you’re not punished too harshly for getting hit). Hopefully with harder group content we’ll see more of a need to actually move around and actively dodge telegraphed attacks (which would obviously necessitate that the current system be looked at).

The simplest solution (although perhaps a bit too simple) would be to have a ‘who is the enemy targeting’ functionality (such as in WoW where you can see who has aggro, if memory serves) and to have a skill-showing functionality (similar to GW1 where it shows which skills the mobs are using and see them casting them allowing for interrupts or dodging or whatever).

Larger enemies would definitely help as well as the ability to see/control aggro, so I agree with you on those points but I disagree with what you said about not being punished to harshly. Some classes do get punished pretty badly if they get hit, like in high level fractals for example. Try thief on cliff side and you’ll see what I mean (1 shot can kill).

Even in easy encounters, it’s just not fun to look at all the clutter, you know?

Particle effects scale with the size of the enemy!!! Woohoo!!!! Use virtue of justice active on lupi, you’ll understand. Would love a slider to stop particle effects from other players/self. Also, dredge disaggregators have an instant mace smack that dazes for 3seconds, talk about lack of tell.

Its sometimes hard to see. But I got used to it. I have a good eyes I can mostly see the attacks when I am focused. So it doesnt bother me.

And dont play with close combat characters. I always play with ranged characters so That is another solution. If you play with close combat it will be harder.

The particle effects problem has plagued GW2 since the beginning. With 5man it isn’t too terrible, but definitely makes things way harder than it needs to, especially considering stacking is the go to strategy in most scenarios.

Being able to disable the effects would be awesome.

SlyDevil.3952:

Particle effects scale with the size of the enemy!!! Woohoo!!!! Use virtue of justice active on lupi, you’ll understand.

Riiight. Forgot about that. Telegraphs are probably our only hope then, since I doubt ANet would fool with re-designing all the particle effects. Simply reducing them wont cut it as one fireball is enough to obscure animations.

Biohazard.7523:

And dont play with close combat characters. I always play with ranged characters so That is another solution. If you play with close combat it will be harder.

I prefer melee and so do a lot of others. If someone has to not use certain play styles because of the graphics, then I think the game is broken…

Also something to note is that I’ve been playing GW2 for over 2 years with over 5k hours logged in. My eyeballs would have gotten used to it by now if that was ever a possibility for me… sigh

I’d like to add something about the existing telegraphs, like AoE orange rings.
There are many cases where these zones aren’t visible until it’s too late (tequatl’s poison zones, or Mark II’s stomps for example). Be it lag, the amount of people doing the event that the game has to load prior to these effects, the beginning of many battles like that are always chaotic.

They’ve needed an optional action bar since before forever. No idea why they won’t implement one in a game with particle effects out the wazoo.

buy a bigger screen….

Particle effects control would be nice and it’s been mentioned on these threads many times but has been totally ignored by Anet.

The Particle effects are so bad at events like the Frozen Maw that it’s very laggy and I cant even see the boss.

This is something really deserving attention. Particle effects should definitely be scaled or reduced in some way. If the current scale of particle effects is “100%” please allow us to make them smaller by at least 50%.

I don’t have this issue but then again I have my settings set to performance in the options panel most of the time.

I wish there was an option to turn off all particle effects except for myself and even then some slider to scale them down. Particle effects are one of the worst aspects of combat in this game. Most of the time you fight a giant blob of flashing lights instead of actual boss, even in 5man content it`s very bad (guardian F1 says hi).

Either an option to tone down particles or making very clear outline of the boss so you can actually see animation and direction it`s facing would be perfect.

I don’t have this issue. Are you playing on a phone or something?

Some pics from reddit and another thread from forums (first post)
http://i.imgur.com/u0mDq0y.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/X3hh2Ro.jpg
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Too-many-visual-effects/first

It`s not about performance, it`s about particle effects being all over place when often you dont even see what you are fighting even in 5 man group (eg. Archidiviner with guardian f1 is completly invisible under blue flames).

And nope, not playing on “phone”, but 24" FHD screen with specs enaugh to have 40+fps on max screen during big zergs and 60+ everywhere else

There’s is an option under the F11 graphical settings, Effects LOD, to decrease particle effects (applies Level-of-Detail style culling) to reduce them and remove those from further away.

Disabling Depth Blur (right above it) may also help with more distant foes and effect sources by keeping them from getting blurry.

Try it and see if you get any positive change.

As for things right up in your face, I’m not entirely sure.

fluffdragon, I always have effects LOD on and depth blur disabled. This issue I have has to do with just the way particle effects look in general. For example, you can set your enemies on fire completely obscuring what the enemy even looks like. That’s just a bad design choice. What we need are the particle effects themselves to be re-designed to be less cluttery and more streamlined in combination with a more extreme effect LOD (because it doesn’t do hardly anything atm) for those more crowded fights.

uhohhotdog.3598:

I don’t have this issue. Are you playing on a phone or something?

Have you ever tried to melee mossman with one or more guardians in your party? If you’re telling me you can still see all of his tells through the constant wall of blue fire, you’re a bold faced liar. Most of the time, I can’t even see which direction the boss is facing. One moment you think you’re safely behind the boss…the next you take an axe to the face because you didn’t see him turn around.

Also, on the topic of champion icebrood wolves, they actually have not one, but two devastating attacks with no tell. The first is the frost nova, the second is a crippling lunge that hits twice. All icebrood wolves actually use the lunge, and no tells for any of them.

One of my old games had this same issue. What they did is put in outlines of characters when they were under the effects of too many particles. So you’d get this glowy highlighted outline around say Mai trin all in bright green when she was covered in explosions and fire, this would always be layed out in front of the particles for the players. It helped a lot to see smaller enemies.

Big enemies don’t always make sense, and I liked this solution for the problem, it worked.

Final fantasy fixed the issue with options.

You can display medium effects or turn them off. This could be applied to everyone, or leave just your parties or group on or off.

add a visible cast bar on mobs and bosses? this way you see what they cast. Seen it in other game, and for me it just makes the game mode way to easy and people just starr at the cast bars and act after that, but if it is a real problem, then yeah cast bars on enemie mobs and bosses in pve would solve issue.