Quality-of-Life thing: AoE circles

Quality-of-Life thing: AoE circles

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Posted by: Lelling.6795

Lelling.6795

I rambled for a bit at the start about why I’m posting this and what the thought process is. Not really crucial to the debate so I hid it :P


One of the things that we’ve been seeing in GW2 is a very consistent lack of consistency (:P), especially when it comes to smaller things that don’t really ruin anyone’s gameplay, or seldom do so. Whether they’ve been overlooked, scrapped, or just unfinished, there is a trillion of tiny features that would require a minimal (intern-level) amount of work, effort & knowledge to add that extra shiny layer of polish to the game.

In conversations with guildies, and other people in our gaming communities, some of these tend to come up quite regularly in conversations, but you don’t see them discussed as often on the forums (or at least, I don’t ^^).

So, I’ve been coming up with a short list of things that I’ve seen people mention being generally annoyed with, at first just thinking I’d list them all – but in the end, I think it’s better to post them individually, giving each a bit of time to be discussed.

AoE Circles
As everyone probably knows, there’s now generally 2 types of AoE indicators (I think there’s actually a few more unique ones, however they are usually restricted to a specific one thing)

There’s the original, faint/thin red line AoE circles, and then there’s the newer, filled out, orange AoE circles.

Generally, the orange AoE circles were received positively, due to increased visibility & better telegraphing, however, the very simple problem is that they are not being used consistently. Many events & abilities still use the thin red line, which can be really difficult to see (& sometimes invisible to colorblind people).

So my question is:
Can’t we just use the orange AoE circles consistently?

If the concern is that the orange would just look too intense if it was applied to everything, then maybe we should at least have the option to turn them off/on?

It’s a tiny thing, I know, but it’s been really bugging me ^^ Does anyone else feel the same, or did I just pull this out of my.. out of nowhere? :D

EDIT: I forgot to mention, but others below have – the other issue with AoE circles is that they often don’t match the actual AoE (example: Mai Trin fractal cannons). Fixing that would also be really nice ^^

EDIT2: The newest suggestion from multiple people has been to not only update all the old AoE circles but to also give the player the option to choose the opacity of them, allowing players to adjust them to their playstyle & vision. I have to say I really like this idea.

Cyan Vei | whole bunch of other alts
[DV] Leader, OpenCommunity admin

(edited by Lelling.6795)

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Posted by: ScribeTheMad.7614

ScribeTheMad.7614

Ah, not what I thought, I was thinking this was about getting hit by AoE when totally outside the marker (whether it be red circle or orange)

“The short answer is that new content is not going to drive people away from the game.
There is absolutely no evidence to support that it would.” -AnthonyOrdon

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Posted by: frednought.1238

frednought.1238

I’d really like to see a consistent split between telegraphs and active skill effects, visually. A lot of the newer orange AoEs actually represent where an attack is about to land, rather than where one actually is (Silverwastes bosses being a prime example). This seems to be the case in almost all instances…except for Tequatl, where the big orange circles are where the active “poison” fields are.
Adding to the confusion is the fact that sometimes the little red outline circles also have a short telegraph period, such as during the Mordrem tentacles’ poison throw attack thing. The red outline will appear for a short time, then the projectiles will land and there will be a poison blob within the circle indicating that the poison is actually active.

TLDR; yeah, these indicators are hella inconsistent and it would be great if they actually made some sense.

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Posted by: ScribeTheMad.7614

ScribeTheMad.7614

Oh oh, and the Inquest grenadiers, when they throw something at you, it shows a red circle where the AoE is going to land, but then the grenade tracks you instead of landing in the middle (I’ve been hit by it when completely outside the red circle).

“The short answer is that new content is not going to drive people away from the game.
There is absolutely no evidence to support that it would.” -AnthonyOrdon

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Posted by: Critical Lag.9075

Critical Lag.9075

I`d love to see option to turn on orange aoe circles for every aoe there is. Sometimes there are so many effects going on the screen that they cover the mob and it`s surroundings and it`s very hard to see either animation or red aoe cirle. The orange circles used in newer content are so much better, clear and visible.

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Posted by: Lelling.6795

Lelling.6795

Ah, not what I thought, I was thinking this was about getting hit by AoE when totally outside the marker (whether it be red circle or orange)

Oh yeah, I was supposed to mention that as well x_x That’s me – too much rambling, too little actual substance :[

EDIT: Yay though, my intention was for others to say what annoyed them about AoE circles as well, to sort of expand on the debate ^^

I didn’t know that thing about the grenadiers :O

Cyan Vei | whole bunch of other alts
[DV] Leader, OpenCommunity admin

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Posted by: Aenesthesia.1697

Aenesthesia.1697

my problem with aoes is that the circle is usually smaller than the actual aoe, and you eat kitten even if standing outside the circles. This, and not the color, should be given top priority for a fix.

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Posted by: Photoloss.4817

Photoloss.4817

The grenades probably work like the engi ones: they are aimed at a random point inside the visible circle, and explode at the actual point of impact. Maybe they’re also semi-homing, haven’t bothered to test.

Projectiles are another related gripe: Slow projectiles with the telegraph circles, tracking vs. non-tracking, collision-checking projectiles, different height management, zigzagging collision-checking projectiles (hi Lupi ), getting hit if standing in the projectile source despite having reflect up (mainly cheap iWarden kills)
And ofc how there is no indicator what does and doesn’t count as a projectile, and which of them are unblockable/“unreflectable”.

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Posted by: freddietheman.6892

freddietheman.6892

I agree on the point that lelling makes about the aoe’s circles, I would love them all to be the new orange circles.
I also agree with that the aoe’s are often to small or that there not landing on the spot that is shown.

I would love to see these things changed or atleast looked at.

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Posted by: Khisanth.2948

Khisanth.2948

In most places where it would matter there is usually too many circles for this to make much difference.

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Posted by: Tommyknocker.6089

Tommyknocker.6089

Honestly I would be happier with consistent AOE timing. I have noticed that depending on the encounter, and once the red circle is placed, sometimes I have 2 seconds to dodge and sometimes must less.

This change would make getting out of the way easier. You can add the consistent type too, but I would just prefer all AOEs to be timed the same.

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Posted by: Lelling.6795

Lelling.6795

Honestly I would be happier with consistent AOE timing. I have noticed that depending on the encounter, and once the red circle is placed, sometimes I have 2 seconds to dodge and sometimes must less.

This change would make getting out of the way easier. You can add the consistent type too, but I would just prefer all AOEs to be timed the same.

That’s a very good point. One good example of that is Triple Trouble – the AoE circles appear when the projectiles START flying, meaning that depending on how far away from the Wurm you are, the actual damage will be delayed more and more.

Perhaps something other than just an unanimated texture, like if it pulsed 0.5/1 second before the damage actually struck, or something like that could alleviate that issue, and create more opportunities for reactive play.

Cyan Vei | whole bunch of other alts
[DV] Leader, OpenCommunity admin

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

I support this. I suffer from red/green colorblindness and there are times when I simply can’t see circles. There are certain rushes where I just walk into traps that are clearly marked, because they’re not clearly marked to me.

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Posted by: Xenon.4537

Xenon.4537

I really hate seeing my beloved GW2 turning into a monochromatic splurge of orange shapes… I would rather they come up with a different solution than to bathe my entire screen in flat, bright, glowing shapes. It destroys the beauty of environment, character models, and animations. What is the point even? Why make character models or animations? There’s no reason to if you are just going to watch big orange circles instead.

Does anyone else remember when the word “telegraph” meant the boss was doing an animation? Not spewing an orange triangle across the ground? This is what telegraphs used to be (notice the distinct lack of puerile geometric shapes):

(edited by Xenon.4537)

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Posted by: SirDrygan.1823

SirDrygan.1823

actually, it’s not the AOE that is not accurate, it’s your ping that is causing you to think that the AOE is not accurate. In fact, you got hit because you were in the circle at the moment you got hit. But as the communication with the server have a delayed timing. I live in ASEAN, my ping is usually 250 to 400 (325-350 avg). And I noticed that I need to dodge early, if not I would still get hit if I dodge as the attack animation is about to hit my char. If I dodge early, I would see the evade coming up, even though on my screen my char is already far away from the circle, but the attack animation of the enemy is just hitting the circle at that moment.
So, stop blaming ANET. It’s the ping that is causing the circle to be inaccurate.

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Posted by: Tuomir.1830

Tuomir.1830

Having to rely on bosses telegraphing their attacks would be nice – if you could see the bosses behind all the skill effects (not to mention many dungeon bosses have devastating attacks with little to no telegraphing). As it is, I’ll gladly take orange circles and would like them to be consistent, too.

Only fools and heroes charge in without a plan.

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Posted by: Rayti.6531

Rayti.6531

The bosses in GW2 all have that kind of telegraph through animations, the problem is, that this is no single player game but one where ~100 people cover up the bosses’ animations. Add to that the skill effects and it is sometimes even difficult to see in smaller groups.

Also, some projectiles are very difficult to see, depending on the background/environment. That’s why the indicator circles are used.

I for my part would prefer the new orange circles. A prime example where I’d love them is the Asura fractal on the platforms with the harpies. Sometimes, the thin red outlines of the knock back projectile circles are outside the platforms you stand on so you can’t see the circles. Add to that the bright background and the situations where the harpies are above you where you can’t see the telegraph for the projectiles…

I don’t have problems with this fractal, it’s just a good example where filled out circles would be way more visible than thin red outlines.

I understand that these orange circles would annoy some players. Maybe they should generally add an option where you can choose your AoE indicators. But then all circles should be consistent and not mixed together as they are now.

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Posted by: Xenon.4537

Xenon.4537

@Tuomir.1830
@Rayti.6531

I understand why people want more orange circles and consistency. They are easier to see. It takes zero imagination to say “put these on every fight”. Please don’t think I’m trying to offend anyone by saying this. It seems like you all consider form and function to be two different things, and they never intersect in game design. Well the reason I cite Dark Souls is because of the remarkable synthesis of form and function in many aspects of it’s design.

In the context of this discussion, Dark Souls has a clear animation for every action that every character makes. When a player casts a spell, they brandish the catalyst, the catalyst glows, and a moment later the spell fires. When a player swings a giant sword, he shifts his weight, hefts the weapon, and then slams it. The same goes for bosses. Any attack is preceded by a clear and deliberate body movement. Each attack has a different body movement. Each body movement anticipates the direction of the attack.

There is no need for ground markers because you can always tell where the danger zone is by the body language of the enemy. It’s therefore not hard to imagine a version of GW2 in which this works.

1. Make bosses large enough to stand over players so that their body language may be seen even when crowded.

2. Remove avatar-based particle effects from bosses. This means no more fire or glowing clouds clinging to the boss’s skin.

3. Create clear and consistent body language animations for every attack. If a boss swings a sword, make him pull it back first for a second while he shifts his weight. If he casts a spell, make him hold up his staff as it glows before the projectile is launched. Make the projectile always fire in the direction he is facing.

I don’t expect GW2 to ever reach such a state. It would have required Anet to adopt a different design philosophy 4+ years ago when the game was in development. However, Anet is an old company with experience and many talented artists and designers who get paid to do this work. Surely they can design something more sophisticated than orange circles.

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Posted by: Xenon.4537

Xenon.4537

My expectation is that Anet will keep adding these boring, ugly orange circles to open world bosses. It’s yet another tacked-on, duct-tape solution to a problem which could have been more creatively solved. Essentially a missed opportunity.

My best compromise I can reasonably ask for is that they limit such orange markers only to open world content of 30+ players. Also add a setting in the graphics tab to lower the opacity of all orange markers from 100% to 0% on a slider. I would keep it around 5-10% personally. Obviously I need to see this crap to dodge it, but I would like the ugly bright intensity to be lowered at my personal preference.

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Posted by: Photoloss.4817

Photoloss.4817

Add an opacity slider for the circles, iirc there already is an option to disable them entirely. That should satisfy the “immersion” crowd, and it should be easy to do.

Don’t bother with character telegraphs until all those annoying “impact effects” are gone. Even in a 5man dungeon you don’t see a thing if your party contains a guard+ele.

1. Make bosses large enough to stand over players so that their body language may be seen even when crowded.

Please no, some bosses are Asuran, and them being taller than a max size Norn is just …wrong.

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Posted by: serow.6524

serow.6524

The Secret World does its telegraph shapes pretty well.

It looks like GW2’s circles, but has more shapes, and uses white instead of red. It also has a single pulse emanating from the source, and when the pulse fills the shape, the effect is cast (it’s a cast bar within the telegraph itself, essentially).

Current 80s: Ranger, Mesmer, Guardian, Elementalist, Revenant, Necromancer.
Working on: Engineer

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Posted by: Rayti.6531

Rayti.6531

My expectation is that Anet will keep adding these boring, ugly orange circles to open world bosses. It’s yet another tacked-on, duct-tape solution to a problem which could have been more creatively solved. Essentially a missed opportunity.

My best compromise I can reasonably ask for is that they limit such orange markers only to open world content of 30+ players. Also add a setting in the graphics tab to lower the opacity of all orange markers from 100% to 0% on a slider. I would keep it around 5-10% personally. Obviously I need to see this crap to dodge it, but I would like the ugly bright intensity to be lowered at my personal preference.

I never felt offended by your post in any way. You made your point very clear (at least to me). In fact, I share your opinion on telegraphs, that it would be much more immersive and interesting if we could see the body language on bosses and predict their actions based on that. All I’m saying is, that in the current state of the game it is unlikely to happen. Orange circles are the easy way out and are most likely to get implemented… Sadly…

Scaling up bosses in size so that you can see their animations is a solution, but can’t be applied to every boss (e.g. Asura end bosses, etc. → that would break immersion even more).

I am no fan of cluttering the beautiful environment with orange circles. But I’d rather have that than not being able to see/predict attacks at all…

I think the wyvern fight in the HoT stress test was a step in the right direction though. As far as I remember it didn’t have circles on the floor but clearly visible projectiles with enough time to dodge them, the belly/throat of the wyvern getting a fiery glow before it breathes fire, a clear animation before it started to use the wind attack…

I hope they generally design bosses like that in the future (in regards to telegraphs).

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Posted by: Lelling.6795

Lelling.6795

I support this. I suffer from red/green colorblindness and there are times when I simply can’t see circles. There are certain rushes where I just walk into traps that are clearly marked, because they’re not clearly marked to me.

This is exactly one of the main things that crops up when discussing these in my guild.

actually, it’s not the AOE that is not accurate, it’s your ping that is causing you to think that the AOE is not accurate. <more words>
So, stop blaming ANET. It’s the ping that is causing the circle to be inaccurate.

The example I gave about the Triple Trouble Wurm is not an example of inaccuracy due to ping.

Additionally, I’d like to respond to the discussion about bosses telegraphing attacks with animations – this is a really important topic as well. There are loads of bosses which are actually really fun if you can read their animations (like the Mai Trin tactic of 1 person staying in range, blocking her teleport projectile), and always feel very satisfying because it is a form of reactive play (another example is the Aetherblade dungeon boss, who is massive).

This is something that the game suffers a lot from – the lack of reactive play. The reason the full zerk stack-in-a-corner and hope everything dies before you do tactic is so pervasive in the game is because a lot of the fights just don’t feel reactive.

Even with Kholer, whose animations are very clear, he is decently sized, and the fight is in close quarters, people aren’t really fond of the fight.

This has a lot to do with players not knowing what our enemies are doing. There’s a huge lack of consistency when it comes to animation telegraphing, and sometimes attacks just don’t make sense. There’s been discussions on this topic about creating enemy casting bars, or causing the enemy portraits to pulse when an animation is happening so that players at least know what to look out for, but that’s an entirely new topic (I did have a post planned about that as well). There’s tons of things to discuss about this though, like the importance of sound & timing, but I really don’t want to derail this topic.

Oh, @Xenon.4537, I hope you’re not misunderstanding me, I’m not saying we should have MORE AoE circles, I’m saying that the ones that exist should be consistently using the new, orange texture as opposed to some (like those in guild rushes) using the old ones, if not for the sake of consistency, then just for visibility.

Add an opacity slider for the circles, iirc there already is an option to disable them entirely. That should satisfy the “immersion” crowd, and it should be easy to do.

Also add a setting in the graphics tab to lower the opacity of all orange markers from 100% to 0% on a slider. I would keep it around 5-10% personally. Obviously I need to see this crap to dodge it, but I would like the ugly bright intensity to be lowered at my personal preference.

I cannot stress how much I like this idea. GW2 has always been about free choice & doing a lot of things the way you want, this just seems really fair, also enabling people to essentially create a “hard mode” for themselves just looking at the animations.

And you’re correct, there is an option to disable them already.

Cyan Vei | whole bunch of other alts
[DV] Leader, OpenCommunity admin

(edited by Lelling.6795)

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Posted by: Slaywright.4807

Slaywright.4807

I have fully monochromatic vision, but that hasn’t stopped me enjoying 99% of games just like anyone would. That is all because of either the little detail devs put in to cater for that or because I can think of a reliable workaround for too colourful situations. This goes all the same for GW2, except for a few very select cases.

Some of my personal gripes have already been mentioned, and there’s been a few very good ideas thrown about. I’m all for customisation, so the opacity setting would ofcourse be essential to have. The pulsing/animating markers as casting bars is also a very neat idea. I personally don’t mind different timings for attacks, but I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, while some people just can’t or don’t want to memorise every single timing. Not to mention stuff without a tell or a timing (like the archdiviner’s lunge or the risen abominations’ backhand slap that feels it does more damage than the club swing).

Traps in Guild Rushes are my main problem. I know the traps are meant to be subtle, but since for me it’s dark grey on slightly darker grey in every instance of a trap, it’s somewhat beyond subtle. It’s, very simply, impossible for me to see half of the traps no matter how much I smash the scan skill. I know the circles are there, and I have memorised the location of a lot of them, and while I do find it a nice layer of personal extra challenge, it’s not worth the extra trouble it sometimes escalates to for the current rewards.

Now this veers off a bit into the whole telegraph side of things, but there’s circles involved. Namely I’d like to point out the Ascalon fractal staring Captain Ashym. Getting to the final boss on that one is a cluster…happening of it’s own with so many circles and random sources of damage you have to go the combat log for explanation and can’t possibly avoid or negate, while it’s not impossible it’s by far the most frusturating fractal.

And then there’s Mr. Fiery Greatsword to deal with, with no telegraphs (except him going “Hey look, you’re dead.” in some ancient Ascalonian accent.) and the worst of all AoE attacks, circle wise. The firestorm. The same way as with the traps in rushes, if the storm is aimed at me I can’t see it coming before it (barring misbehaving RNG) hits and downs, then promptly kills me. Because I don’t see a bit of red in my peripheral vision. Nevermind the overall ring and have little expanding “landing bar” circles where the meteors are coming down, screaming “reactive play” at people. Or something.

All around the game many attacks leave behind a field of some kind, and they all look fine as they are, but the initial signal on where it’s about to land is woefully inconsistent and as already stated many a time sometimes impossible to see. The orange circle can go away once the attack lands and be replaced with the current effects and everything’ll be fine.


But then there’s Tequatl. I think the circles there are perfectly fine. Because it is a fight you need to know, it’s a fight where you react to something else than just a circle in the ground. The cripply odd magic AoEs aren’t pre-telegraphed, but they feel perfectly fine and are visually distinct to instantly tell you what they are doing, forcing people to adopt one of a few tactics available to them (have enough armour/healing to counter it, move out of it, outheal it as a group, etc) and the poison from the fingers is pretty much telegraphed as “hey look, fingers, they will throw poison at you, do something about it” aka reflects, or look out for the incoming projectile and move, or have synchronised cleanses and heals, or… There’s a lot of stuff you can do, that’s one fight that is actually fine and doesn’t need any fixing at the moment.

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Posted by: TexZero.7910

TexZero.7910

I would like the option to color code them specifically to the type of attack….

Something like Red = Storm, Gold = Wells etc…

But maybe thats just me.

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Posted by: Rauderi.8706

Rauderi.8706

+1. Full support.
Because reading the donuts in Subject Alpha is simultaneously obnoxious and hilarious.

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