Guild Wars 2

When I logged into the game and used Chaos Armor I thought I was playing Guild Wars 1 instead of 2. Everything beautiful dies it seems.

Considering the whole bags thing at HoT’s launch….

I’m gonna say no, not seriously, at least not the people who have any real power.

agreed completely, one of the biggest sellers for GW2 is the graphics,
turning a powerful fireball into a laughable pixel is a sure way to tell your customers that you are utterly clueless about what this game needs.
but hey, churn out afew more lame outfits and i’m sure the game will be soooo much better.
clueless…

Liewec.2896:

agreed completely, one of the biggest sellers for GW2 is the graphics,
turning a powerful fireball into a laughable pixel is a sure way to tell your customers that you are utterly clueless about what this game needs.
but hey, churn out afew more lame outfits and i’m sure the game will be soooo much better.
clueless…

But dont you know? Outfits are the best thing ever. No class identity needed, not much work needed and they can “make stuff that doesnt fit any armor class”…like basically all but two or three outfits they released up to this point. Oh look.. today we got a heavy armor outfit that would really make some great combinations with norn armor…or charr armor but nope outfit it is.. cause we here at arenanet dont give a darn about armor personality anymore. Here have these three + the mistward set in this 50 bucks x-pac and that handfull of spec armor pieces cause full armor would be a waste, buy outfits! Be a storm trooper! Bah.. even reading the word “outfit” makes my salt encrusted blood boil.

Basaltface.2786:

Liewec.2896:

agreed completely, one of the biggest sellers for GW2 is the graphics,
turning a powerful fireball into a laughable pixel is a sure way to tell your customers that you are utterly clueless about what this game needs.
but hey, churn out afew more lame outfits and i’m sure the game will be soooo much better.
clueless…

But dont you know? Outfits are the best thing ever. No class identity needed, not much work needed and they can “make stuff that doesnt fit any armor class”…like basically all but two or three outfits they released up to this point. Oh look.. today we got a heavy armor outfit that would really make some great combinations with norn armor…or charr armor but nope outfit it is.. cause we here at arenanet dont give a darn about armor personality anymore. Here have these three + the mistward set in this 50 bucks x-pac and that handfull of spec armor pieces cause full armor would be a waste, buy outfits! Be a storm trooper! Bah.. even reading the word “outfit” makes my salt encrusted blood boil.

Look on the bright side, they could introduce royal outfits where you could look like a king or a princess ^_^

I like the uploaded outfits and think they’d fit the game pretty nicely. Also some school girl outfits like in animes like K-On!

Apparently they do, I even saw one once. But that was a long time ago.

I’ve never heard of a developer decreasing the visuals in there games, improving yes, but never making it worse. I just don’t get it. If this is to do with PvP, could they have not just added it to the standard model setting they have that people are supposed to use in tournaments?

It would seem that ANet are doing a good job of destroying there own game.

Agemnon.4608:

Basaltface.2786:

Liewec.2896:

agreed completely, one of the biggest sellers for GW2 is the graphics,
turning a powerful fireball into a laughable pixel is a sure way to tell your customers that you are utterly clueless about what this game needs.
but hey, churn out afew more lame outfits and i’m sure the game will be soooo much better.
clueless…

But dont you know? Outfits are the best thing ever. No class identity needed, not much work needed and they can “make stuff that doesnt fit any armor class”…like basically all but two or three outfits they released up to this point. Oh look.. today we got a heavy armor outfit that would really make some great combinations with norn armor…or charr armor but nope outfit it is.. cause we here at arenanet dont give a darn about armor personality anymore. Here have these three + the mistward set in this 50 bucks x-pac and that handfull of spec armor pieces cause full armor would be a waste, buy outfits! Be a storm trooper! Bah.. even reading the word “outfit” makes my salt encrusted blood boil.

Look on the bright side, they could introduce royal outfits where you could look like a king or a princess

I like the uploaded outfits and think they’d fit the game pretty nicely. Also some school girl outfits like in animes like K-On!

Yea might aswell. The “dont care” train runs on full engines anyways. Man.. what i would give to have a cup of tea with Crystin Cox… and actually speak my minds about that “balance” she was talking about back then. Boy i gotta get off the forums today…or for a while better said before i actually do pop a blood vessel in my skull.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Apparently they do, I even saw one once. But that was a long time ago.

I’ve never heard of a developer decreasing the visuals in there games, improving yes, but never making it worse. I just don’t get it. If this is to do with PvP, could they have not just added it to the standard model setting they have that people are supposed to use in tournaments?

It would seem that ANet are doing a good job of destroying there own game.

I know. This whole visual noise fiasco is one of the most bizarre, strange, and stupid moves I’ve seen by developers in a long time. They’re really shooting themselves in the foot.

No, they don’t play the game. They’re focused on their PvP league bs that only a handfull of people are interested in.
When i say ‘handfull’, i mean only a percentage of what other games are attracting in views. And when you look at that number, it’s nothing big in comparision to the total number of GW2 players.

A LOT of concerns and grievances were and are being posted on the forums, but it seems the dev’s have no clue whatsoever as how to address them or fix them. Not even a “we’ll look into it” kind of message.

- First they give you a new graphic option to increase the games quality, then they reduce the so-called “visual clutter” to make up for the loss in fps in certain area’s.
You know how other games solve that problem ? It’s simple and called ‘reduce your resolution if you can’t handle it."
By reducing the quality, they are basically reducing their game to a pile of visual crap. Something we played 7 years ago.

- Second they introduce new stats on armors which are utterly useless in most cases and will get you kicked from squads and raids. Way to go with the idea’s there…. into oblivion.

-Third they nerv nearly everything that can bring in gold for the players, the dungeons, the fractals, the basic rewards….the list doesn’t seem to stop.

-Fourth, they hide a lot of the ‘new’ stuff behind timegates, as if it isn’t hard or boring enough to gather all the materials. Another awesome idea, let people wait to make it seem like it’s so frikkin awesome to get into that non existant journey.

-And last but not least, they made WvW into a dead zone by redesigning it and making the rewards (the biggest reason ppl go into that zone void of any significant life) soulbound so that in order to get your stuff done, you need to do it on each character. As if.

All those things combined clearly points to the fact that they want to force players to keep playing for as long as possible by artificial means, wether it be timegating, or forcing them to do all stuff on all of their toons, it all comes down to the same thing.

I might be wrong since i don’t have numbers, but i think they want to compensate somehow for the loss of players they already are experiencing or going to experience.

Man i can’t wait for March when my new desired game is coming out. Then it’s probably “Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.” if this trend here keeps going on.

p.s. : just occured to me, if you really want the game to change and the dev’s to notice, stop playing PvP altogether. I’m sure they’ll say “what’s wrong ? why aren’t you playing ?” like they just woke up and noticed the rest of us.

Nomin.5901:

Good visual clarity, you cant even see auras now! Great job nerfing thief because that was totally needed! Thanks for adding precursor scavenger hunts, but maybe next time you should check and make sure you can complete them? Amazing new specializations, these “equal” specs are now part of every classes core build, overloaded in every possible way! Amazing work adding 10x more cosmetics to the gemstore than that were available with the expansion! Oh and need I mention fractals, what great design and rewards, so happy that I dont have to run dungeons OR fractals anymore!

I know you are trying to be sarcastic, but it’s hard to read it as sarcasm when it’s text. In fact, Anet might read it as actual legit “amazing” and miss the /sarcasm.

^
I can read it just fine. And pretty appalled by all these recent ‘so-called’ fixes. The game’s getting more ruined as we go. /smh

Guys. I can’t believe no one can see this. The reason they are reducing visual effects is because of visual clutter. People who aren’t so familiar with the game can stumble across a GW2 stream with some kind of boss fight and they go “What the #?%! is going on? You can’t even see the boss! All I see is massive exploding things and glowing circles on the ground! What is going on? How can you guys stand to play this game?” This is especially terrible against bosses that aren’t giant monsters. It’s not very easy to see an important tell from the vale guardian if there’s giant mushroom cloud every 5 seconds (what the engineer bomb kit #2 used to be). The elementalist fireball is so big is basically completely enshrouds the mob it is hitting upon explosion. When you have around 5+ players with effects as ridiculous as this it’s impossible see the mob you are fighting, let alone any tells.

Don’t get me wrong, I like flashy effects (Engineer bomb kit #2 and elementalist fireball felt pretty satisfying). But at some point you actually need to be able to see (I’m looking at you, staff guardian #1).

As for mods… I don’t know. I don’t run into them often but about two weeks ago I ran a few fractals with a game dev and got to talk to her for quite a while. She was actually playing from overseas from China while over-seeing the chinese release. So yeah, there’s devs out there.

ZachAttack.3957:

Guys. I can’t believe no one can see this. The reason they are reducing visual effects is because of visual clutter. People who aren’t so familiar with the game can stumble across a GW2 stream with some kind of boss fight and they go “What the #?%! is going on? You can’t even see the boss! All I see is massive exploding things and glowing circles on the ground! What is going on? How can you guys stand to play this game?” This is especially terrible against bosses that aren’t giant monsters. It’s not very easy to see an important tell from the vale guardian if there’s giant mushroom cloud every 5 seconds (what the engineer bomb kit #2 used to be). The elementalist fireball is so big is basically completely enshrouds the mob it is hitting upon explosion. When you have around 5+ players with effects are ridiculous as this it’s impossible see the mob you are fighting, let alone any tells.

Don’t get me wrong, I like flashy effects (Engineer bomb kit #2 and elementalist fireball felt pretty satisfying). But at some point you actually need to be able to see.

As for mods… I don’t know. I don’t run into them often but about two weeks ago I ran a few fractals with a game dev and got to talk to her for quite a while. She was actually playing from overseas from China while over-seeing the chinese release. So yeah, there’s devs out there.

If you’re fighting a boss with over 10 players, I think you should expect a butt load of spell effects and flashy graphics going on. And players on twitch aren’t stupid, they will understand that it’s a boss fight. I can postulate about a new player’s thoughts as well, such as, “Why am I not throwing a fireball, just a spark? This doesn’t look anything like the videos I watched on YouTube!” Or, “Why did I just get stunned when I attacked that Elementalist? Oh, I couldn’t see that he activated his Shock Aura. That sucks.” And keep in mind that these are forced changes, if players are complaining that they cannot see, then they are the ones who need to lower their spell effects, not everyone else. And I believe now we’ve surpassed the amount of viewers of the game on Twitch with our posts about the visual noise “improvements,” so I would like an answer regarding our complaints.

I’m pretty sure most devs play the game. I think one issue is communication not only with players (which only seems to go one way: devs reading up on the forums and fansites but not giving much in return) but also between devs and internal development teams.

ArenaNet isn’t a monolithic entity but rather a company made of multiple employees. There are a number of sub-teams who do a variety of different things. I heard a rumor that it’s impossible to finish Nevermore because there’s an event required for it that’s literally no longer in the game. That’s not a communication issue with players but rather a lack of quality check and lack of communication between sub-teams. Whichever team removed said event didn’t seem to tell all the other teams what had happened.

The reduction of visual clutter is likewise isolated. I don’t think it’s something the entirety of Anet is responsible for, and while there are accusations that it’s primarily an “E-Sports” thing I’m going to not base anything on that. Sure, it’s an issue that sometimes you can’t see what’s going on, and somebody mentioned a boss fight earlier. But honestly how often do you need to see individual effects against a boss? Heck you don’t even need to see the other players, culling was helpful (and is helpful, with the options they added) to an extent.

I think the primary issue with the visual effects reduction is that it’s not an option but rather a poorly thought-out mandatory implementation. The largest criticism, and one that I agree with, is that auras are practically invisible. How that helps in PvP I have no clue, but it certainly doesn’t help in PvE. I can get behind the shape – eggs! – but I’d like to be able to see the effects. Checkboxes and/or sliders and/or dropdown menus like with culling would be ideal.

Devs almost always play their games (Especially MMO’s)…. This isn’t even really a question. At Blizzard, when you apply there they ask you how much you play WoW and their other games and won’t even begin to consider you if you don’t play. This is because they want people who are interested in the game, its lore, etc. and ANet is not any different.

With that said though, I believe some of these new changes are kind of stupid. I didn’t play the game before HoT, but when I purchased the game I splurged on some gems and my total cost for the game now is about $110. If this game is going to continue going in this downward spiral I am going to be pretty upset about my money going to waste. I’m a college student with a kitten ton of loans and other responsibilities and I don’t want my money just being thrown at ANet for them to kitten me in the kitten .

Fireball and Auras weren’t the big offenders for visual clutter. Stuff like the Burning condition visual and on-hit animations that SCALE WITH THE MOB are.

This is just fixing something that isn’t broken and ignoring the real problem…

Glenstorm.4059:

Fireball and Auras weren’t the big offenders for visual clutter. Stuff like the Burning condition visual and on-hit animations that SCALE WITH THE MOB are.

This is just fixing something that isn’t broken and ignoring the real problem…

HA, story of Anet’s balance changes and ‘fixes’ since GW2 launched.

Agemnon.4608:

I like the uploaded outfits and think they’d fit the game pretty nicely. Also some school girl outfits like in animes like K-On!

They already made the school uniforms too but they haven’t released it yet along with the paper bag helms.

Glenstorm.4059:

Fireball and Auras weren’t the big offenders for visual clutter. Stuff like the Burning condition visual and on-hit animations that SCALE WITH THE MOB are.

This is just fixing something that isn’t broken and ignoring the real problem…

“Low-hanging fruit”™

Glenstorm.4059:

Fireball and Auras weren’t the big offenders for visual clutter. Stuff like the Burning condition visual and on-hit animations that SCALE WITH THE MOB are.

This is just fixing something that isn’t broken and ignoring the real problem…

This. Players have clamored for better visuals for a long time, but in usual Anet fashion, they went about it the wrong way. I still find it difficult to fight the Karka Queen without feeling ill because of the rave she puts on for everyone.

I don’t mean this as an insult, OP, but…

Your post kinda reads like a break-up ultimatum to a girlfriend (or boyfriend) who you’re still in love with, but isn’t right for you. Since Anet is not one person and can’t be reasoned with in that way, I recommend you leave and don’t look back. It’ll hurt some, but it’s no good sticking around with somebody who you feel doesn’t care about you.

For my own part, I’m kind of at a point where I basically dink around in game if I feel like it and stay far away from the stuff that I don’t like. That’s kind of what I do with games when I’m on the verge of drifting away though. You sound like you might be better off quitting outright.

Blessed.2198:

ZachAttack.3957:

Guys. I can’t believe no one can see this. The reason they are reducing visual effects is because of visual clutter. People who aren’t so familiar with the game can stumble across a GW2 stream with some kind of boss fight and they go “What the #?%! is going on? You can’t even see the boss! All I see is massive exploding things and glowing circles on the ground! What is going on? How can you guys stand to play this game?” This is especially terrible against bosses that aren’t giant monsters. It’s not very easy to see an important tell from the vale guardian if there’s giant mushroom cloud every 5 seconds (what the engineer bomb kit #2 used to be). The elementalist fireball is so big is basically completely enshrouds the mob it is hitting upon explosion. When you have around 5+ players with effects are ridiculous as this it’s impossible see the mob you are fighting, let alone any tells.

Don’t get me wrong, I like flashy effects (Engineer bomb kit #2 and elementalist fireball felt pretty satisfying). But at some point you actually need to be able to see.

As for mods… I don’t know. I don’t run into them often but about two weeks ago I ran a few fractals with a game dev and got to talk to her for quite a while. She was actually playing from overseas from China while over-seeing the chinese release. So yeah, there’s devs out there.

If you’re fighting a boss with over 10 players, I think you should expect a butt load of spell effects and flashy graphics going on. And players on twitch aren’t stupid, they will understand that it’s a boss fight. I can postulate about a new player’s thoughts as well, such as, “Why am I not throwing a fireball, just a spark? This doesn’t look anything like the videos I watched on YouTube!” Or, “Why did I just get stunned when I attacked that Elementalist? Oh, I couldn’t see that he activated his Shock Aura. That sucks.” And keep in mind that these are forced changes, if players are complaining that they cannot see, then they are the ones who need to lower their spell effects, not everyone else. And I believe now we’ve surpassed the amount of viewers of the game on Twitch with our posts about the visual noise “improvements,” so I would like an answer regarding our complaints.

If you are fighting a boss, you should be able to see what is going on. And I’ve seen plenty of people on twitch commenting on how difficult it is to tell what is actually happening. Now, a way we can make both camps of people happy is to make the skill effect culling an option- that would be amazing!

Nomin.5901:

Good visual clarity, you cant even see auras now! Great job nerfing thief because that was totally needed! Thanks for adding precursor scavenger hunts, but maybe next time you should check and make sure you can complete them? Amazing new specializations, these “equal” specs are now part of every classes core build, overloaded in every possible way! Amazing work adding 10x more cosmetics to the gemstore than that were available with the expansion! Oh and need I mention fractals, what great design and rewards, so happy that I dont have to run dungeons OR fractals anymore!

I have tried being nice and constructive for three and a half years because I kittening love this game. But this is enough, the devs are so out of touch its disgusting and I’m sick of being treated like a child that they just want to take money from.

And you know what makes this even worse? The devs dont say anything. Nothing at all. No replies to anything but irrelevant and kitten questions, because they are too scared to make promises and let down the community. But not communicating is more than letting us down, its driving people away and keeping them from helping YOU improve the game.

“We are working on it!” “Its on the table” Really now? Removing beautiful effects from the game is your highest priority? More so than changing numbers on fractal rewards?

Write off my post as an angry teenager who plays too much of this game, but we can all see some truth to this and it needs to stop. Communicate with your players anet, listen to what they actually want or you are going to run out of players eventually.

Mike O’Brien would like to have a word with you Mister!

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away

I know some are concerned about whether ArenaNet is communicating with you and listening and responding to your feedback. As you saw with yesterday’s announcement, we do. All of us at ArenaNet play the game with you, chat with you and read your forum posts, and work on the things that we think will most delight and entertain you.

We’ve set a clear policy in the past year: we don’t talk speculatively about future development. We don’t want to string you along. Creating fun is an uncertain business: sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t; sometimes we go back to the drawing board over and over before we get something right. If we make optimistic promises and then can’t deliver on them, everyone suffers. So when we attend a trade show or give an interview, we’re there to talk about what we’re getting ready to ship, not to speculate on what we might ship someday.

Don’t read that as meaning that we don’t want to talk with you about the longer-term roadmap. The intention of the CDI threads is to talk with you about the roadmap. We want to talk design philosophy with you and hear how you want to see the game evolve. When those discussions trigger development, we’ll work internally until we have something we’re proud of before we’ll announce it.

A lot of the questions I’ve seen posted this week are as simple as this: does ArenaNet have an agenda to never do something? That’s almost never the case, and if it is the case you deserve to know and we’ll make sure we get more clear. In general the simple truth is this: when we’re not currently working on something, it’s because we’re working on something else instead that we think is more important for the game and community.

Our developers post on these forums on a voluntary basis, and in addition to developers, we have a community team who can clarify and be the bridge between players and developers. They’re ready to engage you on these topics. And I know it’s hard for the community team to engage players across all the forums and sites where these questions are being discussed, so I’m going to support the team in consolidating and focusing as necessary, so that we can be clear to the community where you can go to get a response.

See you in-game,
Mike O’Brien

ZachAttack.3957:

If you are fighting a boss, you should be able to see what is going on. And I’ve seen plenty of people on twitch commenting on how difficult it is to tell what is actually happening. Now, a way we can make both camps of people happy is to make the skill effect culling an option- that would be amazing!

Indeed it would. Indeed it would.

why are people complaining about the reduction in clutter? it has nothing to do with machine quality, i just don’t want to have a seizure when i am trying to do a boss fight.

this game was like a bad rave party at times. the 90s have been dead for awhile, guys. good riddance.

Katta Castellum.3957:

why are people complaining about the reduction in clutter? it has nothing to do with machine quality, i just don’t want to have a seizure when i am trying to do a boss fight.

this game was like a bad rave party at times. the 90s have been dead for awhile, guys. good riddance.

It’s almost like you didn’t read any of the many posts which answered your question.

EDIT: That wasn’t meant to sound insulting. It just continues to surprise me that there are people who are surprised that a globally enforced solution, which doesn’t address the problem but creates another, would cause some discontent.

I wish I had a time machine as I would go back to 2012 and enjoy the best MMO experience I have even had. Now, like most of my guild, it seems I may be looking for a new MMO to play. And that is so sad because at one time I though they had the whole MMO experience down to a science.

Anet could do a simple thing to make everyonne happy : Allow the player to choose the impact of visual effects. Quite easy to make a button with low – medium – high or something like that, allowing the player to decide if he wants to see all the effects or not.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Katta Castellum.3957:

why are people complaining about the reduction in clutter? it has nothing to do with machine quality, i just don’t want to have a seizure when i am trying to do a boss fight.

this game was like a bad rave party at times. the 90s have been dead for awhile, guys. good riddance.

It’s almost like you didn’t read any of the many posts which answered your question.

EDIT: That wasn’t meant to sound insulting. It just continues to surprise me that there are people who are surprised that a globally enforced solution, which doesn’t address the problem but creates another, would cause some discontent.

it was mostly a rhetorical, “i can’t believe it” statement. i agree that an option is the strictly better implementation.

that said, before this change there were “omg, the glitter effects in this game are ridiculous!” posts so i think that opinion on this matter varies. just like with any forum, the complaints aren’t always majority. the people who aren’t mad are busy playing the game.

Basaltface.2786:

Liewec.2896:

agreed completely, one of the biggest sellers for GW2 is the graphics,
turning a powerful fireball into a laughable pixel is a sure way to tell your customers that you are utterly clueless about what this game needs.
but hey, churn out afew more lame outfits and i’m sure the game will be soooo much better.
clueless…

But dont you know? Outfits are the best thing ever. No class identity needed, not much work needed and they can “make stuff that doesnt fit any armor class”…like basically all but two or three outfits they released up to this point. Oh look.. today we got a heavy armor outfit that would really make some great combinations with norn armor…or charr armor but nope outfit it is.. cause we here at arenanet dont give a darn about armor personality anymore. Here have these three + the mistward set in this 50 bucks x-pac and that handfull of spec armor pieces cause full armor would be a waste, buy outfits! Be a storm trooper! Bah.. even reading the word “outfit” makes my salt encrusted blood boil.

Digital Style

Katta Castellum.3957:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Katta Castellum.3957:

why are people complaining about the reduction in clutter? it has nothing to do with machine quality, i just don’t want to have a seizure when i am trying to do a boss fight.

this game was like a bad rave party at times. the 90s have been dead for awhile, guys. good riddance.

It’s almost like you didn’t read any of the many posts which answered your question.

EDIT: That wasn’t meant to sound insulting. It just continues to surprise me that there are people who are surprised that a globally enforced solution, which doesn’t address the problem but creates another, would cause some discontent.

it was mostly a rhetorical, “i can’t believe it” statement. i agree that an option is the strictly better implementation.

that said, before this change there were “omg, the glitter effects in this game are ridiculous!” posts so i think that opinion on this matter varies. just like with any forum, the complaints aren’t always majority. the people who aren’t mad are busy playing the game.

You make exactly the right point – “opinion on this matter varies”, as it does on any subject. People have different needs/likes and clearly blanket solutions don’t work. And yet… here we are. My poor brain is tired of boggling.

ZachAttack.3957:

Guys. I can’t believe no one can see this. The reason they are reducing visual effects is because of visual clutter. People who aren’t so familiar with the game can stumble across a GW2 stream with some kind of boss fight and they go "What the #?%! is going on? You can’t even see the boss!

All of the effects that have been changed do not contribute to that issue.

Glenstorm.4059:

Fireball and Auras weren’t the big offenders for visual clutter. Stuff like the Burning condition visual and on-hit animations that SCALE WITH THE MOB are.

This is just fixing something that isn’t broken and ignoring the real problem…

I’d say the massive norn/charr with massive wings are the big problem. if people can’t make things out, then ANet should have added a slider for those kind of things. I want my big explosions and stuff like that.

Coldtart.4785:

ZachAttack.3957:

Guys. I can’t believe no one can see this. The reason they are reducing visual effects is because of visual clutter. People who aren’t so familiar with the game can stumble across a GW2 stream with some kind of boss fight and they go "What the #?%! is going on? You can’t even see the boss!

All of the effects that have been changed do not contribute to that issue.

I would say they do :P But that’s just me.