Guild Wars 2

Dear Anet,

I understand that you are trying to create a dynamic story both content wise and visually but we need to have a talk about the latter. A great many people are light or visually sensitive. Bright flashing lights, filters, fields of motion… they give these people blinding migraines at best and seizures at worse. I never had an issue with this game and my sensitivity until HoT when the staircase in the second to last episode had me dry heaving with motion sickness. Then, when I reached the battle with Mordremoth, the effects not only confused me but left me with an incredible headache for the rest of the day. Now, in the latest LS episode, the bloodstone shards turn out to have a pulsing, moving light effect that hurts my eyes and my head but I have to approach them to break them.

Please, Anet, I’m begging you – stop with the painful to look at effects in parts of the game relevant to the story. It really adds nothing to the narrative aside from “what happens when the commander gets a migraine”.

Thanks.

While I feel for you, there are those of us who enjoy all the visual effects and could do with more. I’ve played with the game on both the lowest and highest settings and the difference it makes adds a lot to the atmosphere of the game, even if it’s not strictly adding to the narrative. Have you tried turning off all the options, such as post-processing and shaders? That may be help – at the lowest graphical settings there’s hardly any flashing lights or anything. Also, turn off camera shake if you haven’t already. That makes even me nauseous sometimes.

Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll give those a try. I found that camming all the way out during bloodstone sections helped too but I really hate that this is necessary. I don’t know many who enjoy being severely disoriented during their happy casual MMO

most are not “severely disoriented” by these effects. im sorry they are affecting you so much, but youre very much in the minority and most people just see them as lights, not things that physically affect them.

There is actually a few things that you can do to eliminate this handicap:

1. f.lux – a software that will dim your screen, so that the bright flashing lights don’t aggravate your migraines: https://justgetflux.com/

2. A privacy cover for your monitor. Best By and Newegg sell them, but you’ll need to dig into it, to find one that dims the screen. Its better to regulate this with software.

If the issue isn’t the brightness of the screen or effects, and more the motion of the action on the screen, then “dramamine” might be an alternative: http://www.dramamine.com/

Otherwise, i’d consult with your physician and see if they can prescribe you something to assist with the acute vertigo that you suffer from.

Worse case scenario is that you may need to look into games aren’t as action oriented. I know that sounds harsh, but its a reality for many. For example, i can’t play fighter games on consoles anymore, because they completely kill my hands, and cause them to cramp up. Granted, i’d could overcome that, if i just played fighter games more often, and retrain the muscles, but meh. Easier just to play what i find relaxing.

Good luck!

My suggestion is for us to have an option to turn off those effect. I don’t enjoy the game when i can hardly tell whats going on.

No idea why they didn’t add the option to “turn off other players effects”.

It is a pretty standard option in games for the last 8 years. If we were arresting zone bosses and they put them in a police lineup in Lion’s Arch, I couldn’t identify the perpetrator from any fight in GW2. It has just been one giant graphic blur.

Particle effects scaling would help greatly to tone down the insane effects. It’s been mentioned before several times but Anet ignores it.

I’m surprised that you only started to get these problems around HoT. The lightshow game in Guild Wars 2 was pretty ridiculous in larger fights.

Aside from that, I wonder why they haven’t added a brightness setting yet.

would be nice to have limit effects from other players so many people running around with glowy backpacks and swords when I have them set to low

When there’s a fight, all players sort of disappear and are replaced by a massive fireworks display.
It’s true you haven’t a clue what is going on in a large fight because of the light show, and end up just pressing random buttons and hope you don’t die.