Guild Wars 2

Attention grabbing title. This is intended as constructive feedback.

tl:dr Sensory overload is a core design problem that affects gameplay and gates content, not just an inconvenience.

So today I finally figured out the source of my love/hate relationship with GW2. I’ve always felt that this was a great game hiding underneath a layer of obtuse, “almost there” game mechanics. I said it had no depth, no counterplay. People tell me I just didn’t see it; the counterplay was in the timing, the positioning, reading your opponent. I just couldn’t see it.

Literally, as it turns out.

To understand this discovery, I will tell a story. I was discussing Ranger builds with a guildy of mine, and he invited me to a duel to see how I used mine. Now I don’t pvp often, and expected to lose, but what happened was simply infuriating. He dodged everything. He had perfect timing. I couldn’t understand it.

When I asked him how he did it, he told me: “I read your character animations.”

Now, dear reader, if you’ve made it this far without stopping and making a L2P post, you may be wondering why the kitten this is a revelation.

The reason is this: I can’t see the characters, much less their animations. I have long assumed that this is the normal way people experience the game. The one person I know IRL that also plays says the same thing (and neither of us has vision problems). As a result, I assumed that other people simply were more familiar with the animations or something. The situation above made me realize that there is a real, physical difference in how I experience the game vs how my guildy does.

I can see my own character, and the circle on the ground that tells me where the target is, but that’s it. All I see at the target location is a blob of movement and color. There are so many particle effects, so many whirly swoosh effects (aka, movement lines), so many overlays and transparencies and animations that the target is completely obscured.

I can no more learn to read the animations then I can learn to read a book with it’s pages glued shut. The information is simply not there to me.

This is not a rant; this is me describing a PHYSICAL difference in the way my guildy and I see things. What to him is a competitive game of precise timing and positioning, is to me a mass of meaningless colors. I’ve been playing GW2 for 3 years. It’s not a matter of learning the animations; I’ve played Ranger extensively, I was facing a fellow Ranger, I KNOW these animations. I just can’t see them. At all. It’s a matter of sensory input and how GW2 completely overwhelms it.

Since then I’ve done a bit of careful analysis of the graphics to identify the main culprits. Anet, please fix these, preferably by making the UI and graphics elements more customizable. If you can’t, fire your artists and get new ones. This is a basic accessibility problem, no different then people who ask for a colorblind mode.

Culprits, in Order:

1. Floating Damage Popups: I’ve been tuning these out for so long I barely noticed them until I did my careful study of the UI. These kitten ed floating numbers actually completely block everything behind them. Crits in particular, with their red Adam West like “Wham!” background are completely opaque. They are moving, brightly colored attention grabbers, and block everything behind them. They are evil. I had learned to tune them out, but in the process tuned out everything near them, including the target. They are pure, unmitigated evil. Let us turn them off.

2. “Motion Lines”: This appear on dodges, certain skills, projectiles, and the Swiftness boon effect. Consider what they really are: graphical elements moving in OTHER directions from the character model. Remember, although rendered in 3d, monitors themselves are 2d. When graphical elements on the same location of the screen are moving in opposite direction, it can be nearly impossible to tell. Eyes (the physical, actually existing, goo-filled things that most of us have in our face) are notoriously easy to fool, and these motion lines are pretty good at it. No wonder I can’t tell what way people are dodging; the graphics are showing movement in all directions at once because of these lines swirling all over the place. Tone them down, big time.

3. Particle Effects: OMG. So many of these, it’s disgusting. This is an old problem, and one that’s never been addressed. Since it’s been discussed elsewhere (since Beta, in fact), I won’t do it here.

4. Animated Indicators: For example, the “Vulnerability” indicator that pops up when Vuln is applied. It’s a semi-transparent shield that pops up, floats above the target, then cracks into many pieces and fades away. Why waste so much movement and flash on simple debuff icons? Save that “sensory overload budget” for the actual combat target.

Contributing Factors: Just for reference, cuz these can’t really be changed, but by comparing GW2 to other games I identified them as problems. (notably, Wildstar, which is so easy to read I was doing it instinctively before I even knew what the different telegraph patterns meant)
-Pacing. Every autoattack chain, skill, action takes a different unit of time or multiple thereof. There’s no “beat” to combat like there is in other games.
-Multiple Races: Multiple animations. The same actions often look nothing alike on different characters.
-Too Much Bling: Armor, weapons, etc. So distracting. Please let us use “Standard Enemy Models” in all PVP modes.

inb4l2p

I agree. I think I would like GW2 if i could see more of it.

They push open world group event, but you can’t even see the boss, let alone your own character on the screen.

I hope raids make them think about putting a slider or two in for particle effect.

I sometimes think that Michael Bay secretly worked on developing the GW2 graphics.

The thing about a lot of the effects on things is that any one of them is just fine, but they pile up way too much. Take conditions and boons for example. Each one has a visual effect that clearly communicates what is on that target. However, pretty much anything you fight has 10 different conditions and at least 3 different boons on them at all times, making the individual condition and boon particle effects combine into a pointless cloud of shiny noise. And some if the effects that I would want to see better, like retaliation, are usually hard to notice behind all those other effects.

Come to think of it, a lot of the game is like that, where much of the info the game puts front and center is mostly not particularly helpful in terms of feedback that would effect my playstyle, but things that would actually help me to survive are obscured. As you mentioned, the crit damage indicator is a bit over the top, and my crit rate is such that I crit pretty much every time I attack. A special damage indicator that shows when I crit is literally useless to me.

However, the duration of boons and conditions are very subtle and hard to see. The only way to know exactly how many seconds are left on a condition are the tooltip, which you never have time to actually check when you’re on fire. I would love for the conditions and boons on the AI to be larger and actually have a numeric timer for when the stacks will run out. That might actually allow me to better ration out my condition clears and such and know when it’s better to cleanse or ride it out. Especially with conditions like confusion, torment or poison.

Likewise, combo fields have really shiny effects, but it’s really hard to tell what some of them are, unless you recognize the skill itself. Guardian and Mesmer fields for example are painfully obvious, as are most fire fields in general, but something like the fields from an engineer’s mortar are actually pretty hard to differentiate because it’s just a small particle effect at the center of it that gets drowned out buy all the other shiny stuff going on in the game.

The only big graphics issue I have are the awkward zoom-in camera angles that occur during jumping puzzles.

kittening tone down the kittenty michael bay skill effects please.

You know, I’m horrible with elementalist but excellent at thief. Really. It is strange how night-and-day it is. It isn’t that thief is a stronger class than the ele. Really, the ele is the best class in the game. It isn’t that thief is more durable. They’re in the same HP tier, and the armor difference doesn’t mean much.

Its a vision problem. My elementalist has such big, flashy and explosive effects. I also made my ele a a norn, so the physical body of my toon gets in the way. I can’t see the miniscule tells that enemies have behind all of these effects. So my elementalist (and to a lesser extent, guardian) gets close and personal with the floor way too much. I end up having to spam rotations,, and my usage of defensive skills and dodges is largely reliant on the force.

The thief has minimal effects. A slight black woosh behind the weapon, and that’s it. While on my thief, I can clearly see everything that everyone is doing. I don’t blindly spam and hope for the best on the thief. I simply engage.

This has been a problem for awhile. Even with effect LoD turned down I still can’t see anything. I have pretty bad vision, too. It is spotty, never better than 20/30 even with glasses, and without glasses I am one step from legally blind. I come from a game that used to have just as many flashy effects, but had a slider where you could all but completely remove the flashing lights from other player’s attacks.

Read your whole post and couldnt agree more OP. Thanks for taking the time to analyse it to this level of detail.

IMO there’s a problem in how you compare things.

1. You said you PvPed a guildie. That means 1v1. In 1v1 i don’t think the “special effects” are so many that you can’t identify the movements. Add that to the fact that guy maybe does PvP as a passion..so automatically he’s experience in reading his opponent is not only OBLIGATORY if you want to progress but also vastly superior to yours who either are not interested by PvP or play the game casually and even if you have eagle-eyes, if it’s something you are simply not interested in, your brain will NOT stress itself to care so much as to “give it your all”. There are so many factors that go in this.

2. You compare the above to a blob fighting something in PvE. Honestly that is extremely hard even for experienced players because you simply get lost in all the effects that are happening. Best case scenario is you can read someone’s/something’s movements if you try to focus on that thing and try to ignore everything else. Even then there’s a problem because this being a “smash 1 button win” game, people don’t even care honestly. They know for a fact that if they just keep hitting 1 eventually they win. That translates into people not giving a kitten about focusing.

The comparison between these 2 examples can’t be made. The idea behind what you say is there tho and most acknowledge it. Problem here is, the problem you described has deeper psychological roots. Even if they completely remove the effects you will still not focus because:
a) you don’t care that much about that “something” in order to focus;
b) you just want to relax (which doesn’t mean overly focusing on stuff);
c) the game is so easy that focusing means a useless waste of energy and indirectly (your brain) will ignore in time;
d) there is no “extra” reward for focusing compared to ppl who just spam 1-2 skills. That sense of “unfearness” will in time make you not focus even if you indirectly don’t want that. It’s called adapting. Why work more then the guy next to you if you both have the same chance of “promoting” , get the “same rewards” and there’s no “higher authority” to acknowledge your personal mental “investment” in what you do at the end? Best case scenario you do it to prove something to yourself…but after you do it a few times you stop doing it.

Rhyse.8179:

Attention grabbing title. This is intended as constructive feedback.

tl:dr Sensory overload is a core design problem that affects gameplay and gates content, not just an inconvenience.

So today I finally figured out the source of my love/hate relationship with GW2. I’ve always felt that this was a great game hiding underneath a layer of obtuse, “almost there” game mechanics. I said it had no depth, no counterplay. People tell me I just didn’t see it; the counterplay was in the timing, the positioning, reading your opponent. I just couldn’t see it.

Literally, as it turns out.

To understand this discovery, I will tell a story. I was discussing Ranger builds with a guildy of mine, and he invited me to a duel to see how I used mine. Now I don’t pvp often, and expected to lose, but what happened was simply infuriating. He dodged everything. He had perfect timing. I couldn’t understand it.

When I asked him how he did it, he told me: “I read your character animations.”

Now, dear reader, if you’ve made it this far without stopping and making a L2P post, you may be wondering why the kitten this is a revelation.

The reason is this: I can’t see the characters, much less their animations. I have long assumed that this is the normal way people experience the game. The one person I know IRL that also plays says the same thing (and neither of us has vision problems). As a result, I assumed that other people simply were more familiar with the animations or something. The situation above made me realize that there is a real, physical difference in how I experience the game vs how my guildy does.

I can see my own character, and the circle on the ground that tells me where the target is, but that’s it. All I see at the target location is a blob of movement and color. There are so many particle effects, so many whirly swoosh effects (aka, movement lines), so many overlays and transparencies and animations that the target is completely obscured.

I can no more learn to read the animations then I can learn to read a book with it’s pages glued shut. The information is simply not there to me.

This is not a rant; this is me describing a PHYSICAL difference in the way my guildy and I see things. What to him is a competitive game of precise timing and positioning, is to me a mass of meaningless colors. I’ve been playing GW2 for 3 years. It’s not a matter of learning the animations; I’ve played Ranger extensively, I was facing a fellow Ranger, I KNOW these animations. I just can’t see them. At all. It’s a matter of sensory input and how GW2 completely overwhelms it.

Since then I’ve done a bit of careful analysis of the graphics to identify the main culprits. Anet, please fix these, preferably by making the UI and graphics elements more customizable. If you can’t, fire your artists and get new ones. This is a basic accessibility problem, no different then people who ask for a colorblind mode.

Culprits, in Order:

1. Floating Damage Popups: I’ve been tuning these out for so long I barely noticed them until I did my careful study of the UI. These kitten ed floating numbers actually completely block everything behind them. Crits in particular, with their red Adam West like “Wham!” background are completely opaque. They are moving, brightly colored attention grabbers, and block everything behind them. They are evil. I had learned to tune them out, but in the process tuned out everything near them, including the target. They are pure, unmitigated evil. Let us turn them off.

2. “Motion Lines”: This appear on dodges, certain skills, projectiles, and the Swiftness boon effect. Consider what they really are: graphical elements moving in OTHER directions from the character model. Remember, although rendered in 3d, monitors themselves are 2d. When graphical elements on the same location of the screen are moving in opposite direction, it can be nearly impossible to tell. Eyes (the physical, actually existing, goo-filled things that most of us have in our face) are notoriously easy to fool, and these motion lines are pretty good at it. No wonder I can’t tell what way people are dodging; the graphics are showing movement in all directions at once because of these lines swirling all over the place. Tone them down, big time.

3. Particle Effects: OMG. So many of these, it’s disgusting. This is an old problem, and one that’s never been addressed. Since it’s been discussed elsewhere (since Beta, in fact), I won’t do it here.

4. Animated Indicators: For example, the “Vulnerability” indicator that pops up when Vuln is applied. It’s a semi-transparent shield that pops up, floats above the target, then cracks into many pieces and fades away. Why waste so much movement and flash on simple debuff icons? Save that “sensory overload budget” for the actual combat target.

Contributing Factors: Just for reference, cuz these can’t really be changed, but by comparing GW2 to other games I identified them as problems. (notably, Wildstar, which is so easy to read I was doing it instinctively before I even knew what the different telegraph patterns meant)
-Pacing. Every autoattack chain, skill, action takes a different unit of time or multiple thereof. There’s no “beat” to combat like there is in other games.
-Multiple Races: Multiple animations. The same actions often look nothing alike on different characters.
-Too Much Bling: Armor, weapons, etc. So distracting. Please let us use “Standard Enemy Models” in all PVP modes.

inb4l2p

I agree times a bagillion.

I have had it with “not working skills” that are hit by mouse click of by keystroke anywhere from three to twelve times without going off when they used to have a lot better “response” is quite the game changer when it’s not happening to others in wvw and pvp – pve I can mitigate and have much less of the issue because my pet has twice the health as in wvw.

Voices are all off – not just the missing sequences and half of the voiced cut scenes, no, it’s much worse, I am still hearing, after this was supposedly fixed, other voices that aren’t mine, can’t be anyone elses because I am alone and I am not human, norn nor a necro (all of the emotes that come to mind over the past 24 hours alone…).

No, the game is losing integrity – and thereby the game scores are changed – some players can’t “play” since their skills aren’t going off – it makes the other side in godmode and is totally unfair to all to whom this awful thing happens.

As a last thing – Anet did a horrid job of “play like you want” with “Pirate Ship” and other “meta” in wvw.

PvP has its own godmode metas too, heck help the person trying to get a daily if all are wearing the same meta builds.

Dailies on lower maps where events are thin are a nightmare.

But then again I can always go back to the original complaint that is older than almost every single thing that has not been fixed, not even spoken of being fixed – the venerable f2 (f3-f4) not working – ever in some sessions.

Oh and now pets don’t attack many things, walls I get, but mordremoth vines make pets just stand there and do nothing… like they do in some pvp games, like they do in some sessions of wvw… not attacking – not moving – jerking forward but not doing a thing.

Thanks Anet.

Hundreds of dollars some of us over three years and you’re still playing the “really it’s not our fault” game with very loyal customers who love the game but wish you would pay more attention to its innards before going on with “new” content that, if beta was any indication will be a true nightmare for many on top of the aforementioned ad infinitum bugs, skills not going off, voicing you paid so much for not being played, getting stuck in walls, boulders, and not being able to HIT a supervisor in a camp even when you are standing on top of him because it’s blocked but the VIEW you present of the camp is NOT topographical AT ALL – even in a tower, a straight tower, one is blocked from hitting the supervisor by an invisible force – only the correct “angle” will hit him when this happens.

And and and and, players are tired of being told these things are fixed when they truly are not.

It is impacting scores, game-play (especially in pve in the new events) and our ability to recruit to guilds and WvW.

Crappy sfx, floating combat/exp/karm texts, always-on blue/gold/dead ppl’s nameplates, blocky unmovable target frame, useless UI info overload, and no real free cam. That’s why this game can never get any good viewership for esports on Twitch.

GW2 tried to copy dota 2’s game mechanics but it failed at copying dota 2’s visual presentation. The devs don’t understand the viewers so they don’t get the viewership.

I read the entire post and still my reply is:

L2P

The visual clues aren’t just in the character’s animations, they are in the very things you complain about. These flashes, whooshes, and whatnot ARE the visual queues of your opponent’s attack.

Look, if you don’t like it, there is a very simple solution already in the game for you: lower your graphics settings.

I read your entire post, and while thought provoking (and indeed this is a problem in larger scale events), I think you’re completely wrong.

As a long time member of the WvW and PvP dueling community (as a fairly high end member), I can tell you that even most amateurs can reliably see and dodge basic high profile attacks from enemies. I myself can dodge pretty much anything non instant cast. As a d/f ele player I very easily spot appropriate skills to 1) reflect 2) projectile destroy and 3) invuln though. Even on visual effect spamming classes (e.g. ele/engi/mesmer), this is very easy (with the exception of asura where they have the exact opposite problem of not having enough of a “tell”).

I’m not even close to unique in this regard. Any mid level duelist can do the exact same thing. The key is in playing every class or fighting them enough to learn to spot their tells. I learned by 1) dueling a lot and 2) playing every single class to 80 and then some in a pvp setting on multiple builds. This will allow you, even if the particle effects are super flashy, to spot virtually any tell in the game (again, there are exceptions and times where the environment can make it hard to spot tells e.g. mid point on legacy of foefire makes me unable to see things like mesmer pistol 5 because of the bright color).

Unfortunately, just honestly, it is really a l2p issue. It’s not impossible, you’re not physically restricted from doing it, you’re just not applying yourself enough it seems. You have valid points but overall I just don’t agree with your conclusion.

My idea for the problem:

Options:
- Show player only effects.
- Show party only effects.
- Show all effects.

well I do agree with OP that option to turn them down was in the options.

in case of huge open world boss events?

I see me, boss and a load of nameplates…. floating in the air….

and one thing to l2p guys – if I understood OP correctly his problem lies beyond the border of stuff he can actually “learn” the issue is that nearly everyone of us has slightly different built eyes that the others while some people even stands out in noticeable way – where one with “good eye” will be able to spot a load of important stuff on the screen while playing – other person will not be able to spot anything because the eye will just go crazy with amounts of input put onto it – I think thats what he meant with “input overload” as well – the amounts of stuff on the screen overloads his EYES capacity of input resulting in him seeing just a colorful mess in the place where other people would see a lot of information

also I can tell for myself that sometimes – and that was noticeable for me ESPECIALLY when playing on lower graphcial setting – combination of merely two or three skills was capable of generating amounts of particles totally obscuring the whole screen of the player – f.e. have you ever tried to play on lowest setting and cast on a mob in tight room guardians gs leap of faith directly followed by whirling wrath? while wielding cobalt on top of it?

I guarantee to you that in such situation you won’t be able to even see your own character – only one huge blue… something :P

I actually main guardian and use a Sunrise (has more particle effects than Cobalt). I never had the issue Lord Trejgon or the OP describes.

Hell, coming from WoW, GW2 is actually a fairly easy to read MMO. The UI and visual effects in GW2 are much better and much cleaner than the colorful mess that is WoW.

Arius.7031:

I read your entire post, and while thought provoking (and indeed this is a problem in larger scale events), I think you’re completely wrong.

As a long time member of the WvW and PvP dueling community (as a fairly high end member), I can tell you that even most amateurs can reliably see and dodge basic high profile attacks from enemies. I myself can dodge pretty much anything non instant cast. As a d/f ele player I very easily spot appropriate skills to 1) reflect 2) projectile destroy and 3) invuln though. Even on visual effect spamming classes (e.g. ele/engi/mesmer), this is very easy (with the exception of asura where they have the exact opposite problem of not having enough of a “tell”).

I’m not even close to unique in this regard. Any mid level duelist can do the exact same thing. The key is in playing every class or fighting them enough to learn to spot their tells. I learned by 1) dueling a lot and 2) playing every single class to 80 and then some in a pvp setting on multiple builds. This will allow you, even if the particle effects are super flashy, to spot virtually any tell in the game (again, there are exceptions and times where the environment can make it hard to spot tells e.g. mid point on legacy of foefire makes me unable to see things like mesmer pistol 5 because of the bright color).

Unfortunately, just honestly, it is really a l2p issue. It’s not impossible, you’re not physically restricted from doing it, you’re just not applying yourself enough it seems. You have valid points but overall I just don’t agree with your conclusion.

Agree with this as former Duelist – 2½ years, until the last balance patch made dueling either boring (join the cheesetrain) or annoying (fight the cheesetrain) with almost no middle ground – unless you find likeminded players, which are becoming more and more of a rarity these days (still doing it, but less frequently).

Of the people that i fought with i’ve never seen anyone not being able to recognize the Animations from their opponents, even if those would be Elementalists, Mesmers or Engineers. It may be a problem if players stack too many SFXes on top of each other (spamming Grenades and Special Bombs combined with my Red-Green Color Blindness can actually prevent me from seeing the red AoE Cyrcles when i stack on certain Bosses in Dungeons), but that doesn’t really happen in 1vs1.

When you duel someone, knowing their animations and being able to recognize them on the fly is mandatory (well.. actually there are builds out there that might carry a player incapable of doing so anyway) – so i think in your case it really just means that you got to train a bit more. Ranger might not be that useful in Zerging, and they might not be part of the Dungeon- or PvP Meta, but if there is one discipline, in which it really excels, it would be 1vs1

Lord Trejgon.2809:

(…)
also I can tell for myself that sometimes – and that was noticeable for me ESPECIALLY when playing on lower graphcial setting – combination of merely two or three skills was capable of generating amounts of particles totally obscuring the whole screen of the player – f.e. have you ever tried to play on lowest setting and cast on a mob in tight room guardians gs leap of faith directly followed by whirling wrath? while wielding cobalt on top of it?

I guarantee to you that in such situation you won’t be able to even see your own character – only one huge blue… something :P

Playing on lowest settings myself (including subsampling, lowest resolution and without screen stretching, meaning that my game literally shows me a small viewport surrounded by a black frame when i’am running it in fullscreen) – if a (most likely Medi)Guard teleports into you with a spinning Cobalt, visual effects should be the last thing to worry about :P

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

…so the physical body of my toon gets in the way. I can’t see the miniscule tells that enemies have behind all of these effects.

Even with the camera changes, this is a perpetual problem for me. I generally play larger characters, so things like jumping puzzles and fighting smaller mobs can be a real chore.

I generally don’t have the “too much shiny” problem, except at world bosses. Then it’s ridiculous. Map populations are often way too high to support them all coming together like that.

As long as they continue to add more fine tuned settings options to allow you to enable/disable certain effects and intensity without affecting anyone else’s game play, I’m all for it.

GW2’s graphical overload is so crazy that I often can’t even find my cursor, which makes it rather difficult to click on anything or aim ground-targeted effects. I really wish there were ways to either tune down the effects you mentioned or tune up the cursor because it’s one of the most important parts of the interface yet it’s impossible to find when 5+ people are beating on Champion (which is itself shooting flames out in all directions).

Blaine Tog.8304:

GW2’s graphical overload is so crazy that I often can’t even find my cursor, which makes it rather difficult to click on anything or aim ground-targeted effects. I really wish there were ways to either tune down the effects you mentioned or tune up the cursor because it’s one of the most important parts of the interface yet it’s impossible to find when 5+ people are beating on Champion (which is itself shooting flames out in all directions).

Really? I never use my cursor outside of navigating through my inventory.

Targeting the nearest enemy? Press ‘Tab’. Tabbing through multiple targets? Press ‘Tab’ again.

Placing a group target on the targeted mob? Press ‘Ctrl+T’.

Targeting the enemy that you’ve put a group target on? Press ‘Capslock’ (for me, I think the default is Ctrl+Shift+T).

Anyway, my point is, you can do everything in this game with keybinds. You really don’t need your cursor for anything combat-related, other than placing ground-targeted skills, which always gives you a very big neon-green symbol on the ground to clearly show you where you’re placing your skill, so that shouldn’t be too hard to see.

I often lose my cursor in all the graphics as well, and playing a Necro most of my skills require targeting an area so that cannot be done with the keyboard.

I only have trouble when facing world bosses, there’s too many effects going on, but for pvp or normal pve I don’t think it’s that cluttered. :P
But I’m a filthy casual so don’t mind me.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

I read the entire post and still my reply is:

L2P

The visual clues aren’t just in the character’s animations, they are in the very things you complain about. These flashes, whooshes, and whatnot ARE the visual queues of your opponent’s attack.

Look, if you don’t like it, there is a very simple solution already in the game for you: lower your graphics settings.

It doesn’t matter what the graphics are set to – and many of us have better machines and very fast connections.

You must not be playing on tier 1 wvw or a boss map or mordremoth much – because all of those things have nothing to do with “graphics levels” at all, it’s just a mishmash of things that just don’t work – separately or in combination.

It seems you didn’t bother to read the postings, you skimmed them and pronounced all of us idiots.

Not even close.

The game has serious issues which are about to be compounded by even more problems without a single one from over three years of postings and begging have done nothing to get most of them fixed.

My pet has half the life it does in pve? Want to know why Rangers are at a great disadvantage? That’s just one – and there are many more mechanics that don’t work.

You can’t get 50% health back by “lowering graphics” and you can’t make the UI work when it just isn’t.

DDOS attacks at the same time on TS should tell Anet that their game is being popped from outside sources but hey, let’s not use some intelligent computer forensics, just blame the players, Anet has plenty more where we came from.

It’s disrespect bordering on malfeasance to allow a game to have so many errors, errors that would not be accepted in any console game or arcade game – and we paid much more than we did for those so why do we have to go without logical fixes for broken mechanics for over three years?

???

I have to agree with the OP. Sometimes all the visual effects are just too much for a normal brain to process. All of this could easily be fixed if Anet just gave options of turning down (or off) the overabundance of visual effects. that way people could customize their visual experience.

atheria.2837:

LucosTheDutch.4819:

I read the entire post and still my reply is:

L2P

The visual clues aren’t just in the character’s animations, they are in the very things you complain about. These flashes, whooshes, and whatnot ARE the visual queues of your opponent’s attack.

Look, if you don’t like it, there is a very simple solution already in the game for you: lower your graphics settings.

It doesn’t matter what the graphics are set to – and many of us have better machines and very fast connections.

I am one of those people.

atheria.2837:

You must not be playing on tier 1 wvw or a boss map or mordremoth much – because all of those things have nothing to do with “graphics levels” at all, it’s just a mishmash of things that just don’t work – separately or in combination.

I actually do play on the NA tier 1 WvW servers as well as playing Silverwastes from time to time. I play on max-graphics. Never had an issue with it.

I also play high-level competitive PvP, where reading your opponents and fast reaction times are much, much, much more important than in WvW zerging or PvE. And there I’m also doing fine.

atheria.2837:

It seems you didn’t bother to read the postings, you skimmed them and pronounced all of us idiots.

Not even close.

I read the entire OP carefully. I skimmed through the rest. I didn’t call anyone an idiot though.

atheria.2837:

The game has serious issues which are about to be compounded by even more problems without a single one from over three years of postings and begging have done nothing to get most of them fixed.

I don’t have any issues with the visual style of GW2, so it’s definitely a personal problem, not a problem with the game. As I said, the UI and graphical style of GW2 is much cleaner and much more readable than WoW, which I used to play before GW2.

atheria.2837:

My pet has half the life it does in pve? Want to know why Rangers are at a great disadvantage? That’s just one – and there are many more mechanics that don’t work.

Rangers are in a good spot in both WvW, open-world PvE and PvP. The only place where rangers perform less is dungeons and fractals, but that has nothing to do with your pet’s health and everything to do with the stacking nature of dungeons/fractals and rangers dishing out the most DPS at a range.

atheria.2837:

You can’t get 50% health back by “lowering graphics” and you can’t make the UI work when it just isn’t.

The UI works fine. Again, coming from WoW, the UI in GW2 is a huge improvement.

atheria.2837:

DDOS attacks at the same time on TS should tell Anet that their game is being popped from outside sources but hey, let’s not use some intelligent computer forensics, just blame the players, Anet has plenty more where we came from.

Every MMO deals with DDOS attacks from time to time. GW2 suffers very little from it. When was the last time you saw GW2’s servers being DDOSed? I think that has been over a year ago.

Besides, how is this related to the thread’s topic, which is about graphics/UI?

atheria.2837:

It’s disrespect bordering on malfeasance to allow a game to have so many errors, errors that would not be accepted in any console game or arcade game – and we paid much more than we did for those so why do we have to go without logical fixes for broken mechanics for over three years?

Uh what? When is the last time you played a console game? They’re not much better off than GW2 when it comes to bugs and glitches. GW2 has fairly few bugs for an MMO.

And if you paid much more for GW2 than a console game you’re doing it wrong. Console games cost 60 bucks. GW2 at launch only 50 bucks, then for a long time it was sold for 10 bucks and now it’s free-to-play.

If you’ve spend more than 50 bucks on the core game, then that’s something you chose to do yourself. If you think GW2 isn’t worth your money, you shouldn’t have spend more money on it.

I can’t help but wonder OP, could part of the problem be your monitor?

While LCD monitors have improved a lot over the years, there is still a very big range in terms of pixel response and ghosting.

Some screens have very good color accuracy but might not have the pixel response needed to keep things from getting blurry or muddy when the action starts.

Would you or anyone else with this issue mind posting the model of monitor you use, or at least the panel type (if you know it) – ie: TN, IPS, VA, etc…

Thanks

“i don’t like dodging”

because I see the “dodge me” visuals as annoying and like to stand there and take high damage attacks face first.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

I actually main guardian and use a Sunrise (has more particle effects than Cobalt). I never had the issue Lord Trejgon or the OP describes.

tehnically I don;t have said issues since I have rig capable of sustaining the game on medium settings :P

the thing occured to me only on the lowest of lowest ones

and again – I don’t think anyone here would really mind if there was phew additional settings at graphics tab that would let ppl like OP to turn some flashy off

You don’t have to get rid of shading or lower character models. Simple fix turn post processing off.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Blaine Tog.8304:

GW2’s graphical overload is so crazy that I often can’t even find my cursor, which makes it rather difficult to click on anything or aim ground-targeted effects. I really wish there were ways to either tune down the effects you mentioned or tune up the cursor because it’s one of the most important parts of the interface yet it’s impossible to find when 5+ people are beating on Champion (which is itself shooting flames out in all directions).

Really? I never use my cursor outside of navigating through my inventory.

Targeting the nearest enemy? Press ‘Tab’. Tabbing through multiple targets? Press ‘Tab’ again.

Placing a group target on the targeted mob? Press ‘Ctrl+T’.

Targeting the enemy that you’ve put a group target on? Press ‘Capslock’ (for me, I think the default is Ctrl+Shift+T).

Anyway, my point is, you can do everything in this game with keybinds. You really don’t need your cursor for anything combat-related, other than placing ground-targeted skills, which always gives you a very big neon-green symbol on the ground to clearly show you where you’re placing your skill, so that shouldn’t be too hard to see.

You’re right, I don’t need it for much other than placing ground-targeted skills. Too bad those are pretty common for a lot of professions, including Elementalists and Necros (my mains). Also too bad I prefer smartcasting, for which a clear cursor is absolutely imperative.

(Oh, and tab targeting is ok but has an irritating tendency to target the trash mob that I can’t even see 5 meters behind me rather than the world boss filling my screen 20 meters in front of me, and tabbing to the next one only helps so much when there are 20 trash mobs in the area. I’d also really like to be able to pick out specific targets for blink skills, since sometimes I want to Steal to a target outside of the fray very quickly, yet that’s needlessly difficult to do because I’ve lost track of my cursor.)

Glancing through the thread, it seems to be a pattern with you that if you don’t have a problem with something, no one is having a problem with that something. I’m not asking for the cursor to be replaced for everyone, I just want the option to give it some highlighting. What possible objection could there be to such a simple, nonintrusive request?

It’s hard to say unless OP tells us his hardware and ping/fps rates.

Don’t worry, they added more clutter by adding in the visual of your own name. So if you press alt to find where ppl are or mobs are…you now get more things on the screen.

This is a thread for people playing on gaming PC’s right? Because I have an old crappy computer and have never set the graphics up. My only complaint is I would like to see an options to shut off weather conditions (rain & snow) that cause lag for me.

Some responses:

“I don’t believe that it affects 1v1”
-My point is that it does. It’s nice that it doesn’t cause any problems for you, but as you may or may not have noticed as you travel through life, different people are different. That includes eyes. Which are things. Physical things with physical limitations that vary from person to person. This is what I mean when I say the SFX gate content- people like me, who can’t decipher all the noise, simply don’t have realistic access to high-level gameplay (well, technically we do, but we have no choice but to fail at it). PVP obviously, but with raids coming, possibly that as well.

“Those swirly effects, etc, ARE the telegraphs!”
-As I explained, that’s the entire problem. These effects give multiple messages, they are too flashy and complex. They feature movement in multiple directions simultaneously. They occupy the same screen-space as the target. Having so many effects, with so many competing movements (sfx+target itself), colors and directions occur at the same place on screen is impossible for me to sort out.

“You want to relax and not focus.”
-I can’t focus on something I can’t see. It’s great that YOUR biological sensor-motor apparatus can make sense of all this noise, but mine can’t. It’s impossible. I’ve tried, as in dedicated deliberate time to practicing it. For me, it can’t be done.

“Hardware, etc.”
-Fair point about the monitor, I don’t have the best. However, this is the only game I have this much trouble with. Other, similar games (Wildstar, platformers, action games, etc) I’m able to overcome this problem with a little practice. GW2 is so over the top that even with time devoted to study and recognize the effects, I still can’t do it mid combat. Since this is the only game with this problem, I’m inclined to believe it’s not the monitor.
-FPS is 60+ in normal play, 20-30 ish during world event zergs. I run with Effect LOD on, no shadows, ambient occlusion for higher contrast, and only 2x level AA for minimal distortion of the image.

I’ll try to find the time to take some screenshots and make some demonstrations. That’ll have to be later though.

PS. To Anet: In case you read this (lol). I have never spent any money on this game above the box price. I have not ordered HOT and don’t currently intend to. This issue is why. I used to think it was cause there was no attention to the core game, no repair of broken mechanics, etc, and I didn’t want to support lazy development. I thought the game just didn’t have the gameplay I wanted, and I was biding my time until something better came along (no subscription cost and all that, so why not waste my time here?). Instead, I’ve now realized that the things I want are in fact in the game. They are the reason I keep coming back – the reason I have this sense that GW2 is SOOO CLOSE. But it never fully “gets there” – and I’ve finally realized that this visual issue is why. When I literally can’t see the game mechanics, is it any wonder I think the mechanics are broken? Anet, this issue has cost you significant amounts of my money over the last 3 years, money that I’ve instead spent on other games, looking for gameplay that it turns out GW2 actually has but that I could never see. I wonder how common this problem is?

Tell the tells guys, tell the tells.