Guild Wars 2

Was already posted in another thread, but for better visibility I make a new thread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3v24hg/the_reduced_visual_noise_changes_have_to_stop_gw2/cxk2o2z

Thanks folks, I passed this discussion along to the folks driving the project on combat visibility.
Combat visibility in general isn’t driven by any sort of “esports” stuff though I realize that’s the easy out that’s cool thing to blame things on this week. Despite some of the insane assumptions I’ve seen lately, the PvP pro league is pretty much entirely a marketing team thing and has almost no impact on the dev team. Though we all think it’s really cool, and seriously some of those games monday were awesome!

From a marketing standpoint, it (and the ESL weekly cups and WTS tournaments before it) has been extremely successful so far, among the most successful projects our marketing team has ever launched to grow our title in the history of the Guild Wars franchise in return for the cost. If you don’t like it more power to you, don’t watch, but it’s absolutely helping our marketing folks make Gw2 a bigger game which I’d hope we’re all excited about. If you want to see the game fail I’m not sure what you’re doing here, but rooting against programs like pro league is basically rooting against Gw2 growing. When folks come here and rip on stuff like PvP, you’re basically hurting the games ability to grow – and personally I would say shame on you, if you truly love the game, be constructive and give awesome feedback and suggestions: but don’t knock it just cause it’s not PvE. And let’s be honest, it beats spending marketing funds on taxi confession ads or people spray painting wall cinematics if you ask me.

The reality about FX visibility is it’s consistent feedback we’ve had on every part of Gw2 for years that people can’t always see what’s going on in combat; our design, gameplay programming and FX team are putting a focus on resolving this issue together. This is most important in WvW and open world PvE where it’s the most problematic and where we need to solve this the most, though certainly impacts other parts of the game from Raids to Fractals to PvP.

Seeing what’s going on in combat isn’t a PvP problem – it’s a Gw2 problem, and it’s why our teams are trying to address it. I will say last time I saw the backlog of combat visibility cleanup work, the vast majority of stuff was along the lines of what you’re all suggesting below. More programming solutions at the systemic level and going after a lot of the side-FX like noise generated by other players rather than directly impacting your own FX 100% of the time. That’s the type of stuff you should be seeing in the future as this project ramps up, and looking at more options so you can opt into more noise if you want seems pretty logical. Along with that I imagine they will have opportunities to revisit some of the concerns raised here in relation to needing to see stuff that is important and how some FX have now become unreadable that should be, it’s (mostly) great constructive and totally fair feedback imho.

Oh nice. But we don’t really care. We want our skills effect back. NOW.

Khyan.7039:

Oh nice. But we don’t really care. We want our skills effect back. NOW.

Sigh.
You know, this kind of behavior is probably why Anet doesn’t communicate much.

… rooting against programs like pro league is basically rooting against Gw2 growing. When folks come here and rip on stuff like PvP, you’re basically hurting the games ability to grow – and personally I would say shame on you, if you truly love the game, be constructive and give awesome feedback and suggestions: but don’t knock it just cause it’s not PvE.

I don’t think it’s PvE people necessary complaining, but more the PvP crowd that feel this league was started on a badly balanced meta.
First and foremost if they want the game to grow they need to make more than 1 new pvp map per expansion and start listening to the community when they say skills are too strong (like a 21k Gun flame, Dragon Hunter traps, Revenant hammer 2, etc).

I’ve rarely met anyone complaining about combat visibility except in PvE where zergs attack a single foe because it has 5 million HP. I think the team in charge of reducing the visual noise are not been properly guided and perhaps do not understand what skills are important to see.

Anet come on, you don’t need to nerf the effects. What you need to is create contrast. When talking about PvE and all those circles the color is red. Mesmer stuff has very big effects and is purple. Not much contrast so it blends together a lot. When elementalist uses firestorm and such it’s red, also blends together. You might say, well water stuff is blue so high contrast. This is where contrast starts to do bad things. Since the water stuff is very strong and the aoe of the enemy doesn’t have a very strong color it doesn’t work. I’m not saying that should change the colors all together but take a look at a farmers market. There is a reason why to put red tomatoes in a green box.

Seems like a perfectly reasonable response. Please go back to spheres on the auras though the eggs look dumb.

Khyan.7039:

Oh nice. But we don’t really care. We want our skills effect back. NOW.

No, “we” don’t.

Khyan.7039:

Oh nice. But we don’t really care. We want our skills effect back. NOW.

since skill effect clusterkittens PvE too, i’d say no, i like the way it is (and yeah I use ele often too, so i’m not biased or something)

Seems entirely fair and honest. GG Colin. To actually go out and admit that the taxi thing was kinda not so great was good, it show’s at least he is self-aware and that he’s also admitting that ESL and the Pro League stuff is marketing too is great, gives some insight.

People need to calm down. Auras, yes, aren’t so great and could have been better but I’m really not sad to see them go. Added ontop of everything else could you honestly say you were able to see your oponents animations? Especially through a static field? I couldn’t.

Calm down, this project seems like it’ll be a big one and take quite a while. They’re addressing a huge issue the game’s had since launch.

I’m glad Colin took the time to talk about this stuff and be pretty honest and blunt. We need more of that, especially calling out bad attitudes. We don’t need that.

Yes, if ANet screws up (see: current collection issues and the range of untested stuff) they need to be told it was crap. They aren’t unwilling to budge (see: Commander tag changes, WvW reset time changes – THEY CHANGED IT TWICE FOR US and a number of other issues). Let’s not just throw mindless tantrums and act like entitled children though. Yes, we have a right to be upset if we paid money. We don’t have a right to get nasty or act like children though. That helps nobody and only drives the devs away — would you honestly want to come and talk about your work if half the players were telling you how bad you did your job and how incapable you are? I wouldn’t. I’d wanted to stay as far away as possible.

Stay positive, stay constructive and stay reasonable. We get what we want by providing constructive feedback, not mindless abuse and tantrums.

The reality about FX visibility is it’s consistent feedback we’ve had on every part of Gw2 for years that people can’t always see what’s going on in combat; our design, gameplay programming and FX team are putting a focus on resolving this issue together.

It’s ironic then that so far that team manages to go in the other direction – it’s making the skills much less visible, thus making the situation even more confusing.

I said this in the other thread about visual noise and it was scoffed off.

Glad Colin said something, but it needs to be said on their forums or in a dedicated blog post on their site not on Reddit.

If it’s a company policy preventing as was the case with “Legendary Crafting” then it may be time to rethink that policy or come to a more sensible one that isn’t using reddit as the means for speaking freely while the forums are the cracked down on.

mexay.3902:

Stay positive, stay constructive and stay reasonable. We get what we want by providing constructive feedback, not mindless abuse and tantrums.

Well… not quite. Yes, it’s good to try to keep things cool and constructive.

But doing so is no guarantee of getting any particular thing any one or group of us wants, any more than throwing a tantrum is.

Be constructive and reasonable out of respect, certainly. But people shouldn’t do it expecting results, or they will find themselves in tantrum mode sooner or later.

• They seem to post more on Reddit than on their own forums
• They nerf dungeon rewards because they don’t want us doing them
• They nerf various skill and spell effects

Do these guys even like what they create?

LegACy.1296:

Khyan.7039:

Oh nice. But we don’t really care. We want our skills effect back. NOW.

Sigh.
You know, this kind of behavior is probably why Anet doesn’t communicate much.

No, the whole thing could have been handled much better.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Khyan.7039:

Oh nice. But we don’t really care. We want our skills effect back. NOW.

No, “we” don’t.

you… cant actually like these changes, can you? besides, im pretty sure the majority of people would like their spell effects back. just saying. (:
even many of the people who believed the effects needed a toning down agree that this is far too much. i mean you cant even see certain moves. :|

dont be a rebel! CONFORM! CONFORM!! :P

I see ANet would rather post on reddit than there own forum…..

If they are going to post something like this on reddit, is it really that hard to copy and paste on there own forum?

Maybe people don’t use reddit, but I’m betting if people have questions or want information, the go to the games own forum, or website. Not reddit.

So the graphics changes are here to stay, I guess.
It is a bit strange that there are more official posts on Reddit than here. Has anyone tried asking Colin on Reddit why that is?

If someone at ANet really believes that a player can not figure out what is actually going on because of the skill effects, then they should give up on whatever kind of perverted “esport” joke they are trying.

Here’s some real esport PvP game that is just as shiny and I bet you that everyone who actually spent some time playing the game could tell you the exact skills and items being used:

He makes some good points, but seriously, the guilt trips and manipulation are not necessary.

Kitten your stupid money wasting E-sports, stop ruining my game!

At least read what Colin says before venting. He says it is not being driven by esports.

Sounds to me like they listened to a few criers and expectet them to be the “majority”, thus getting surprised by the backlash.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Kitten your stupid money wasting E-sports, stop ruining my game!

But the e-sports aren’t ruining your game.

If anything, they’re bringing people and money to the game. It’s more marketing than anything.

It’s at least sufficiently successful because you don’t keep throwing money into something that doesn’t produce a return.

There are no heavy dev resources being used in the promotion of the e-sports platform that is being taken away from other parts of the game.

My suggestion is to bring back the Skill Monitor Bar from the original Guild Wars.

For anyone here that never played the original Guild Wars, if you had anything (friend or foe) targeted, and they were activating a skill, you would see a warm up bar for that skill.
http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Skill_Warmup

This part really bugs me about theses comments.

“If you want to see the game fail I’m not sure what you’re doing here, but rooting against programs like pro league is basically rooting against Gw2 growing. When folks come here and rip on stuff like PvP, you’re basically hurting the games ability to grow – and personally I would say shame on you, if you truly love the game, be constructive and give awesome feedback and suggestions: but don’t knock it just cause it’s not PvE. And let’s be honest, it beats spending marketing funds on taxi confession ads or people spray painting wall cinematics if you ask me.”

A) I don’t think anyone is rooting against pro leagues, they’re rooting against Anet half-kittening it and ignoring the community that’s asking for balance and we have to wait 3 months to hear that it wont happen. Also to say that rooting against pro leagues is rooting against gw2 growing is total bs, that’s a huge leap to make.

B) “Shame on you” for ripping PvP. Sorry … what! You even admitted that PvP was DoA on release 3 years ago and yet here we are still asking for balance, still asking for bugs fixes still asking for matchmaking improvements still asking for new modes (1 in 3 years). I mean balance … balance is the MOST important thing in pvp and you guys just seem to not care whatsoever.

C) “if you truly love the game, be constructive and give awesome feedback and suggestions” …. WE DOOOOO!!! go look at the warrior sub forum, its pages and pages and pages of suggestions and feedback that have been ignored since bew2. We are the ones that “truly love the game” and the only time we get answers is when we rage on the forums that nobody talks to us. But its okay we’ll have a nice cdi in 3 months and then wait another 6 for anything to change.

Honestly … just no. There’s a reason that people laugh when you say esports, and it isn’t because the community is qq’ing. You have so many people that put so much time and passion into the game in all games modes and it (personally) feels like they’re just ignored. Not for the first time either

Whens the next hype train?

I’m glad that the effects have been reduced. I like nice graphic effects as much as anybody, but whenever I actually have to put effort into playing because I’m facing a challenging opponent, I’d rather see what he’s doing right now.
It would have been nice to make the effect reduction optional, though.

Jesseii.2097:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Khyan.7039:

Oh nice. But we don’t really care. We want our skills effect back. NOW.

No, “we” don’t.

you… cant actually like these changes, can you? besides, im pretty sure the majority of people would like their spell effects back. just saying. (:
even many of the people who believed the effects needed a toning down agree that this is far too much. i mean you cant even see certain moves. :|

dont be a rebel! CONFORM! CONFORM!! :P

Actually, I would like for all to have the option to tune this anyway they see fit. Why this isn’t implemented yet after all these years is a mystery to me, since there’s always been complaints about the mess of graphic effects during certain scenarios.

Then it would be up to everyone to pick a setting that fits their needs. Anet, make it happen.

CETheLucid.3964:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Kitten your stupid money wasting E-sports, stop ruining my game!

But the e-sports aren’t ruining your game.

If anything, they’re bringing people and money to the game. It’s more marketing than anything.

It’s at least sufficiently successful because you don’t keep throwing money into something that doesn’t produce a return.

There are no heavy dev resources being used in the promotion of the e-sports platform that is being taken away from other parts of the game.

Odd cause i’m pretty sure they just gave away over $200,000 and had a grand total of 9000 viewers on twitch…

I don’t know how much more clear it can get than that…

ZudetGambeous.9573:

CETheLucid.3964:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Kitten your stupid money wasting E-sports, stop ruining my game!

But the e-sports aren’t ruining your game.

If anything, they’re bringing people and money to the game. It’s more marketing than anything.

It’s at least sufficiently successful because you don’t keep throwing money into something that doesn’t produce a return.

There are no heavy dev resources being used in the promotion of the e-sports platform that is being taken away from other parts of the game.

Odd cause i’m pretty sure they just gave away over $200,000 and had a grand total of 9000 viewers on twitch…

I don’t know how much more clear it can get than that…

Colin Johanson

As for viewers when it comes to the marketing side since you commented on it…pro league week one had over 400,000 unique viewers (non view bots) watch for a reasonable amount of time. That’s beyond awesome and a huge return on the investment. Are we LoL? Hell no we’re not. But PvP has been steadily growing for the last 2 years and it keeps growing faster and faster. Rather than knock it-let’s all get behind it and root for it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3v0x29/how_do_anet_expect_us_to_take_pvp_seriously_when/cxk3v95

A little clearer, it seems.

I never had any trouble seeing what my enemy is doing through any of the skills, because all you need for that is eyes.

Aah, on Reddit. Of course, makes perfect sense. Where else could there be any communication?

And then some public shaming your community instead. Yea, I can see how this is going to keep being a thing.

I don’t even care what the message is, i’m not interested either way. But the sheer disrespect in the medium they choose to communicate and public assault on their customers is frankly unbelievable.

ferdi.1452:

• They seem to post more on Reddit than on their own forums
• They nerf dungeon rewards because they don’t want us doing them
• They nerf various skill and spell effects

Do these guys even like what they create?

Most of them didn’t create any of that, it was people that left the company around the base game’s launch.

Not all ‘growth’ is desirable to all people. :-/

LegACy.1296:

Khyan.7039:

Oh nice. But we don’t really care. We want our skills effect back. NOW.

Sigh.
You know, this kind of behavior is probably why Anet doesn’t communicate much.

No. Anet not communicating much is why we have this kind of behavior.

Colin’s post shows the contempt he has for the player base, and what’s maddening is that the attitudes he’s condemning are a direct result of their consistently poor communication and quality control combined with a glacial iteration pace, and nothing else. People are going to get upset when they care a lot about a game and see it going down a bad path with no one talking to them about it. The onus is on Arenanet to properly manage their community, not all but ignore them and then blame them for the resulting malcontent.

“The reality about FX visibility is it’s consistent feedback we’ve had on every part of Gw2 for years that people can’t always see what’s going on in combat; our design, gameplay programming and FX team are putting a focus on resolving this issue together. This is most important in WvW and open world PvE where it’s the most problematic and where we need to solve this the most, though certainly impacts other parts of the game from Raids to Fractals to PvP.”

Yes, and this is why every other MMO in existence has effect sliders for people to use to minimize the visibility of other players’ effects. Forcibly removing and minimizing effects with no player control is obviously going to make a lot of people unhappy.

Angus.5961:

He makes some good points, but seriously, the guilt trips and manipulation are not necessary.

Agree. The tone of the post was incredibly patronizing.

So. Daft question. Are we 100% sure he is the real Colin?

So Colin’s response is to belittle and berate their customers into believing that their visual nerfs that happen to coincide with their big eSports push have nothing to do with each other. Hmmm. Their HoT expansion showed all this great visual candy to help push sales then they take it away and we are supposed to believe what? So I guess what we have here is false advertisement. Anet knew they were going to remove these visuals after millions of customers purchased their expansion pack. Oh Anet lawyer up.

Shouldnt this reduced effects thing be a graphics setting? why are they forcing it on everyone?

I understand what he is saying, but the issue is the design philosophy is only in reducing the impact on visual noise and not any potential negative implications. The impact in zergs in virtually zero here with the auras. A boss is still obscured at the point of impact with the boss (ie not where an aura is affecting) regardless of the change.

Has this helped the problem they are trying to resolve? No
Has it caused a greater degree of problem with the community? Possibly yes
Should another solution be worked on first? Yes, although it sounds like plans are in place for that
SHould auras be nerfed and legendaries given more effects? That makes no sense to happen
Should we be worried what skills are next for nefing At this stage yes. Nothing in Colin’s post suggests the recent feedback will be taken on board, although I hope I am wrong.

This is a game about visuals and effects. It is a beautiful game, but to damage the whole game for the sake of bosses is what is making ppl unhappy. I remember my first day at headtstart playing on my Sceptre Ele and going WOW at the explosive skills it was conjuring. I’d be extremely sad to know no one else can experience this if this direction continues.

Whatever their solution to this visual debacle is, even they must realize one thing now…clock’s ticking.

CETheLucid.3964:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

CETheLucid.3964:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Kitten your stupid money wasting E-sports, stop ruining my game!

But the e-sports aren’t ruining your game.

If anything, they’re bringing people and money to the game. It’s more marketing than anything.

It’s at least sufficiently successful because you don’t keep throwing money into something that doesn’t produce a return.

There are no heavy dev resources being used in the promotion of the e-sports platform that is being taken away from other parts of the game.

Odd cause i’m pretty sure they just gave away over $200,000 and had a grand total of 9000 viewers on twitch…

I don’t know how much more clear it can get than that…

Colin Johanson

As for viewers when it comes to the marketing side since you commented on it…pro league week one had over 400,000 unique viewers (non view bots) watch for a reasonable amount of time. That’s beyond awesome and a huge return on the investment. Are we LoL? Hell no we’re not. But PvP has been steadily growing for the last 2 years and it keeps growing faster and faster. Rather than knock it-let’s all get behind it and root for it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3v0x29/how_do_anet_expect_us_to_take_pvp_seriously_when/cxk3v95

A little clearer, it seems.

6 of one, half dozen of another. 9000 viewers checking in on 1 or 2 games every day for a whole week is easily enough to generate 400,000 “unique” viewers . Also have no idea how he knows there weren’t any view bots. The whole point of a view bot is that is looks like a person watching.

I have no doubt that PvP is growing, but growth does not equal majority. They recently said that since F2P they are getting 3.1 million unique log ins a month. If they really believe in PvP then they will tell us how many of those 3.1 million spend the majority of their time in PvP and how many spend the majority of their time in PvE maps. Based on how I face the same people over and over in PvP, i’m guessing they are at around 300,000 in PvP on a regular basis with another 300,000 going in once in a while.

If they split PvP and PvE balance then I really wouldn’t care. And if they didn’t completely neuter the effects of my PvE ele I would care even less. But until they do I will fight tooth and nail to get PvP dismantled so that it stops ruining my game experience.

Dark Saviour.9410:

Not all ‘growth’ is desirable to all people. :-/

I’m going to have to agree here. The fundamental problem with more people getting into something is those who are established already built up a decent skillset. (I’m mostly talking about PvE here) Since new players are going to be less skilled than established players newer content or even previous content will have to be nerfed to accommodate them. Popularity also means sanitation and neutralization, which is why you hear original fans of a band complain whenever the group they liked becomes popular. Their attitude, values, statements that spoke to the original fans is now lacking. It isn’t the fact they become popular per se but rather how they do it. Instead of speaking to them they speak vagueness to everyone.

And so the same danger applies to video games. Not just to specific franchises, but gaming in general. We want games that know they’re games and don’t try being movies. The occasional custscene is okay, but too many can hamstring the game’s flow. In Mass Effect 2 for example it felt like I spent more time talking than actually shooting things, and that wasn’t too engaging since it was mostly cover and let team buddies do a lot whereas in an old school game like Quake you’re dropped right in the middle of a fun level and can immediately get shooting. I know TPS and FPS are different (Sheppard obstructs too much so TPS seems like the superior sub-genre) and Quake seemed to have far more hidden stuff and mechanics like using an invincibility power up to traverse lava. In addition to mechanics specific to the genre games should build on them to avoid feeling exactly like others, but also to avoid gimmickry. Final Fantasy innovated the ATB and limit break systems while its dynamic difficulty in VIII was just gimmicky. Just turn monsters into cards, save before every card game to avoid losing cards or getting the random rule, and turn cards into high level spells that can’t be drawn from monsters at a low level. Not exactly an intuitive way to play but is optimal since it avoids empty levels.

Tl;dr: Games need to be made for gamers and a franchise shouldn’t lose what drew in the original base. A game has value because there is a lot to master, and some content should challenge those who’ve obtained such mastery. If someone hasn’t mastered it then they do not meet the skill cap to clear obviously.

Patronizing, and out of touch is what I came away with after reading this so called official response on reddit forums. Four paragraphs on esports and visuals. It’s pretty obvious which direction this game is going for. I guess everything else about HOT is fine.

DoctorDing.5890:

At least read what Colin says before venting. He says it is not being driven by esports.

Of COURSE it isn’t .. it’s entirely coincidental all this nerfing happened as ANet’s e-sports antic got underway.

Blaming non-existent PVE QQ about visual effects is laughable but just another example of the contempt in which they hold most players these days.

Nerf the effects WHEN in a large situation NOT when we are in small groups / solo.

Default models aren’t forced at all times, so why low quality spells. Flashiness is one of the main reasons to play ele -_-

I hate to say this, but after reading his reddit comment, I have to say he seems very out of touch with the Guild wars 2 community. I sense lots of a arrogance in his post as well. It was terrible PR imo.

It’s a pretty common trend these days for CEO’s and higher tier developers to avoid their official forms and make PR statements on 3rd party websites when they know they did something wrong or the community in mass is upset, instead of addressing us here in a constructive manner, they are avoiding a lot concerns the community has been bringing up over the past month or so since heart of thorns was released.

I still have faith in Arena Net and will give them the benefit of the doubt, but they really do need to step it up in at least their communication.

Kraggy.4169:

DoctorDing.5890:

At least read what Colin says before venting. He says it is not being driven by esports.

Of COURSE it isn’t .. it’s entirely coincidental all this nerfing happened as ANet’s e-sports antic got underway.

Blaming non-existent PVE QQ about visual effects is laughable but just another example of the contempt in which they hold most players these days.

Non-existent? Perhaps, you missed the countless threads lamenting the inability to see anything because of the over-abundance of visual effects. Many with screenshots.

For the most part I agree with Colin’s post, but some of the effects are not that needed or didn’t need to be nerfed, auras in particular. Fireball for ele’s yes, that’s fine, the executioner sythe effect on my necro, that’s fine as well, the chill field isn’t the threat, the threat is the attack which will leave you stunned and in a pulsing chill field.

But some things like chrome wells didn’t need a nerf, but rather, given priority visually due to what they do, same with engi laser and dragonhunter traps. Gamechanging big attacks need the accompanying visuals and animations. The same goes for friendly support attacks that heal or buff allies.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Kraggy.4169:

DoctorDing.5890:

At least read what Colin says before venting. He says it is not being driven by esports.

Of COURSE it isn’t .. it’s entirely coincidental all this nerfing happened as ANet’s e-sports antic got underway.

Blaming non-existent PVE QQ about visual effects is laughable but just another example of the contempt in which they hold most players these days.

Non-existent? Perhaps, you missed the countless threads lamenting the inability to see anything because of the over-abundance of visual effects. Many with screenshots.

So what you’re saying is that they should have had a setting for this years ago, but didn’t see at as a problem until after the sale of HoT and implementation of eSports.