Guild Wars 2

…what I’m fighting for all the fireballs and particle effects.

Even with a small group of 5 people in a dungeon most foes/bosses are reduced to a large white/blue flame with a red circle underneath. I’d normally be “sorta” ok with this except…

A lot of enemies have animations that a player needs to watch out for. The animation is a warning that if a player doesn’t do something proactive (cast a specific skill, dodge, heal etc.) then a large amount of pain and/or death will soon follow. This leads to an obvious question…

How am I supposed to know when to dodge/heal/block if I can’t see what I’m fighting?

I find the lack of a feature to remove these effects to be the worst-thought-out aspect of GW2. Others may not feel as strongly, but this ruins much of the game for me.

calling it now, this will be merged into the existing thread about overwhelming spell/particle effects. Which is cool cuz it was an important thread and hasn’t been bumped in a while.

Seeing as they already added an option to tone down the effects, which didn’t really help a lot, I’m more inclined to ask for UI tools to help see through the mess.

Cast bars (to see incoming attacks)
an option to Display target’s target
a more visible mouse cursor
bigger(?) hit/click boxes on enemies. maybe its me but i always have trouble accurately clicking on enemies to select them after tab targetting has failed me.

a t s e.9614:

This is pure exageration . I have a very poor computer and delayed skill lagg and it never bothered me . I’ve ran so many dungeons that most of the time I already know when and what to dodge. And if your computer is terrible you must plan even before it happens. Unless you have a lower fps than me you shouldnt complain . My fps between 11-18 depending on the dungeon.

just because you willingly suffer through poorer performance than the average player doesn’t mean other people’s issues somehow just disappear.

300 people yes- 5 people?

a t s e.9614:

This is pure exageration . I have a very poor computer and delayed skill lagg and it never bothered me . I’ve ran so many dungeons that most of the time I already know when and what to dodge. And if your computer is terrible you must plan even before it happens. Unless you have a lower fps than me you shouldnt complain . My fps between 11-18 depending on the dungeon.

Just because you enjoy bad frame rates and lagg does not mean that others should be okay with it. What kind of argument is that?

a t s e.9614:

This is pure exageration . I have a very poor computer and delayed skill lagg and it never bothered me . I’ve ran so many dungeons that most of the time I already know when and what to dodge. And if your computer is terrible you must plan even before it happens. Unless you have a lower fps than me you shouldnt complain . My fps between 11-18 depending on the dungeon.

Er … how is one supposed to learn the dungeon in the first place?

Scrambles.2604:

calling it now, this will be merged into the existing thread about overwhelming spell/particle effects. Which is cool cuz it was an important thread and hasn’t been bumped in a while.

Seeing as they already added an option to tone down the effects, which didn’t really help a lot, I’m more inclined to ask for UI tools to help see through the mess.

Cast bars (to see incoming attacks)
an option to Display target’s target
a more visible mouse cursor
bigger(?) hit/click boxes on enemies. maybe its me but i always have trouble accurately clicking on enemies to select them after tab targetting has failed me.

They have long/obvious animations, no need for a cast bar (presuming you can see your target through all the partical rubbish).

Morrigan.2809:

300 people yes- 5 people?

Fwiw, I don’t have much trouble seeing the mob with smaller numbers of attackers, but the particle spam can be quite aggravating with even two players, especially if burning is involved.

Morrigan.2809:

300 people yes- 5 people?

Regularly running with a Mesmer, Ele and Guardian (and 2 Warriors but their attacks don’t exactly produce effects) with at least 6 Legendaries spread in the group on show at all times, yes 5 people can mean it is difficult to see some of the less-obvious animations. Get’s me downed quite a lot – but that’s why you can rez from a downed state.

That doesn’t excuse why there is no option to turn off such effects ingame

Turning off legendaries? Then we should be able to turn off exotics weapons aswell and armors. And maybe turning off everything just to see your own character and nothing else.

a t s e.9614:

Turning off legendaries? Then we should be able to turn off exotics weapons aswell and armors. And maybe turning off everything just to see your own character and nothing else.

Exotics that produce effects yes, we should be able to turn things off like the sparks from Mjolnir, fire from Firebringer and the dust from Infinite Light. When so many effects are stacked, it becomes difficult to see.

The main issue however is Ele/Mesmer & Guardian’s burning animations blocking. And of course the stupid, over the top trails from Sunrise & Twilight.

A simple part-solution would be to allow the already in-game generic character models triggered by culling to be able to be activated for party members.