Guild Wars 2

Preface

I’m sure this is something that has been brought up many times in the past, though if it’s been said recently it appears to have slipped back the pages and a search didn’t turn it up – so my apologies if this is “that thread again”

But with the recent Megaserver implementation and boosted player numbers I personally feel that this is something that needs to be brought up again.

A means to selectively disable the rendering of effects

This is something you find in many other MMOs (FF14:ARR for example).

The problem

It’s always been an issue that when large numbers of players are engaging a single, often small target such as a champion, the sheer volume of explosions, beams of energy, clouds of dust, can quickly obscure the actual target, or even large portions of the screen – for example:

http://i.imgur.com/q57XsUm.jpg
(At that stage, gameplay degenerates into blind button mashing)

Since the megaserver system rolled out, the problem has become even more acute, given the much larger volumes of players.

Implementation

On the graphics panel, there’d be a new option, likely with some permutations of the idea, for example:

• Show all – As per normal GW2
• Show team effects only. – Only displays explosions and effects for party members
• Show own effects only. – Only displays explosions and effects you create

To clarify, projectiles and ground effects would still be rendered since these are important; but superfluous effects such as as explosions, dust clouds, giant shards of ice etc, which are purely visual in nature, would not be displayed.

Benefits

There’s a number of benefits, primarily:

• Users with slower machines can opt to not render irrelevant effects to improve performance on big fights.
• Players for whom boss telegraphs and positioning is important, can hide effects so they can actually see those telegraphs and act on them (Thieves and rangers for example often cannot even tell if they are flanking or in front of a boss in extreme cases)

There are very few cons to the proposal, since ground effects and projectiles are still rendered, so players should still be able to recognise the attacks being used, and by who.

It isn’t just the added number of people either. Thanks to the wardrobe more people than usual will now have Legendary weapons (or duplicates) to splash obnoxious footprints and weapon swooshes all over the place (battle and town). I would love to be able to kill some of that stuff as well.

Yes please, this is a problem for melee as you can’t see the enemy animations that let you know when to dodge.
(I know this is an old topic, but the OP made such a nice post.)

Who need to dodge in world bosses , is just to press 1 for 2 mins

Been asked for more than a year, asked again after megaservers, and I even had it listed as 27. Slider to adjust amount/intensity of particle effects (which make events like Risen Priestess of Dwayna look like an epileptical disco). in this thread 8 months ago.

Yes please. As someone who has severe visual impairment, this would be helpful. Not only do all the extra visual effects make it nearly impossible to see anything at times, they are also extremely painful some times – like getting stabbed in the eyes.

Since I am one of those with a slower comp I would love this.

Conaywea.5062:

Who need to dodge in world bosses , is just to press 1 for 2 mins

You can have the same issue if dungeons. If doing this would help the player base become better at actively avoiding damage by dodging, I’m all for it.

I’d like this, not from a performance point of view, but to actually be able to see what the hell is going on at world bosses

I’d be fine with heavily reduced effects as well. Sign me up either way.

Oh yes. Definitely.