Guild Wars 2

Am i the only one thinking that there are way to many effects ?

I think this is literally killing the game, or at least, its potential. Don’t get me wrong, the game’s still playable but the way the effects are designed is serously downscaling gw2’s potential to almost 0.

How on earth are we supposed to care about the animations, anticipate moves, dodge properly and most of all execute combos with our teamates. How could this game offer any serious PVE or PVP content ? Most of the time, ennemy players/bosses/mobs/doors are hidden behind this huge ugly mix, this is not fun, or effective.

Another problem is that ennemy skills/animations/effects are very similar (identical..) to the ones player use. So it’s even more confusing, even with the red circles. Imo, the ennemy visual effects should always be different than the friendly ones.

Btw i’m playing a thief, and this is one reason why melee is a total pain compared to ranged.

Finally, the effetcs are nice alone, but they’re not working together, at all. So i’ll just finish with these 3 words that are really important imo… less is more.

And as a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s what i’m talking about :

Uhm. Yeah. Effects. And there goes my fps below 10.
I like these pictures, I’ll add more when I get back from work.

Isn’t there an option to turn down particle effects?

Too many that convey too little information. Most of the time, I’ve no idea what just happened to me. Not fun.

Except that all these particles make me lag like hell,most of the times in events I cant see what is happening except a huge lighting effect towards the target and the only indications that im hitting the target are the numbers .An option to remove all these unnecessary particles while keeping only the important is more than welcome,I hope it comes soon.

While the point you make is good and I too believe Anet will have to deal with this, you went with extreme exaggerations and sensationalism so this is a lot less likely to get to Anet properly.

On another note I want to offer a piece of advice to thread makers.
I’m not sure you guys realize this but Anet hears “if you don’t do this your game will die” on a daily basis, on any subject.
I realize you believe tossing in some far-fetched statements will help for it to be taken seriously, but realistically it actually decreases the credibility of your argument.
Try bringing more evidence (videos for instance), system specs, etc, I’m very positive it will help the cause a lot more than doomsaying.

This is a serious problem for melee characters. You can’t see red circles, you can’t see windups – heck, you can barely see the mob!!

Now add to that a Norn or Charr character who is huge and is therefore much more constrained by the camera distance than a smaller character, and you can’t do ANYTHING but just stand in the lightshow and cry.

I say make those particles on bosses half transparent so we can see through WTH the boss is doing

Red Falcon.8257

While the point you make is good and I too believe Anet will have to deal with this, you went with extreme exaggerations and sensationalism so this is a lot less likely to get to Anet properly.

Hi, honestly i’m not trying to exagerate anything, It’s a standard doorfight in WvW and a standard group event in Harathi Hinterlands, nothing more.These screenshots don’t come from my imagination. I’ve played the game a lot now, and as a thief, i’m pretty sure that many melee players may feel the same way : )

If you believe that something I said is completely wrong, please be free to argue : )

This can be an issue when trying to lay a small AOE circle on a boss like, say, lava font.

Honestly I don’t know how melee players do it. I feel like it is impossible to tell what is going on with all the spells going off and I feel like bosses spam their AOE attacks. What is the point of dodge when you are just going to end up rolling into another red circle and then another red circle that you can barely see.

I’m leveling a guardian and warrior and I think they are fun classes but I’m worried I won’t be good enough to run any dungeons with them. I’m definitely in awe of people who are good at melee. How do you do it in this game?

There is definately a lot of screen clutter.

One way to minimize it would be to add a feature that de-emphasises spell effects that aren’t yours. Something simple and unobtrusive, like reducing the saturation so yours pop out more is all. Would make a big difference in knowing what’s going on around you.

Passive Aggressive.3154:

Honestly I don’t know how melee players do it. I feel like it is impossible to tell what is going on with all the spells going off and I feel like bosses spam their AOE attacks. What is the point of dodge when you are just going to end up rolling into another red circle and then another red circle that you can barely see.

I’m leveling a guardian and warrior and I think they are fun classes but I’m worried I won’t be good enough to run any dungeons with them. I’m definitely in awe of people who are good at melee. How do you do it in this game?

My primary character is a 2H Sword wielder and I have a skill that makes him rush against the targeted opponent and then attack him. This skill is a necessity during large boss fights as the screen can get cowered with so many effects that I cannot see my character and the boss. The only other option is to attempt moving in the general direction of the boss and randomly attack until damage numbers appear, this of course require that I know where my character is…

So I agree that the effects can often get overwhelming and they have been the reason that my character got killed on several occasions. They really need to do something about it because it is just ridiculous that they are even allowed to completely hide important in-game characters and objects from a game design perspective.

I know this might sound rough but I love GW2 and just want to be able to better enjoy all the raid-like fights.

While visual effects are nice for the most part you have to admit that not being able to see where to put the AoE field as an ele is almost as annoying as people who use the scatter attack -_-

My main in an ele and even i have a difficult time sometimes seeing through the effects.I love them don’t get me wrong…just wish there was an option to tone them down a bit.

the effects are nice looking but completely impractical. I looked many times for ways to just turn it off completely but they don’t have that option.

In fights involving more than 3 players, you don’t even see the mob unless it’s a giant; and then, all you see is his shin even pulling camera back.

It’s just impractical for the type of game play they designed. just give option for us to disable player effects. Not reduce, disable. I’m fine with just circles on the ground.

Do what Wildstar is doing for their AOE

Full coloured circles. Red for enemies, Green for Friendlies and Blue for personal AOEs.

Then enable players to turn off or lower others spell effects while keeping the full coloured circles. Having overlaying rings just gets confusing especially when they are white. Bad colour choice imo.

Burkderp.3904:

Do what Wildstar is doing for their AOE

Full coloured circles. Red for enemies, Green for Friendlies and Blue for personal AOEs.

Then enable players to turn off or lower others spell effects while keeping the full coloured circles. Having overlaying rings just gets confusing especially when they are white. Bad colour choice imo.

Doesn’t anyone think about color blind players? Red/green color blindness is the most common variety and color blindness in general affects about 9% of the population.

Besides, the solid circles would just overlap. And while I’m sure that it’d be better than the current situation, but it’d also be ugly.

It’s not just melee characters.

On my Ranger, where positioning is key, I can’t even see the enemy most of the time and, on the rare occasion when I actually can see them through all the effects I can’t actually tell which way they are facing so I can be in the right place. The solution? I stand still, only moving to dodge AoE or direct attacks (and, realistically, I’m providing exactly ZERO bleeds even if I am in the right position since everyone else is adding bleeds as well and it’s capped at 25).

At least my Ranger can actually hit the target. Trying to place a Mark on the ground, in a place where it can be triggered, so that my Necro does more than auto-attack damage is a nightmare… and I can’t even tell whether or not they trigger it.

And that’s not even taking into consideration the need to see an enemy wind-up for special attacks… which is, of course, impossible.

There apparently is a solution, though. Turning off particle effects supposedly fixes things. But that makes the game look like crap. So, the choice is to play the game at reduced graphics settings to see what is going on, or to play at max graphics and be effectively blind. That really is poor design.

There is one up-side, for me. The fireworks don’t cause lag for me, but I know they do for other people. As a Ranger I can rest easy that my attacks are not contributing to the fireworks so I’m not making them worse and not contributing to other people’s lag.

Kwami.4356:

Burkderp.3904:

Do what Wildstar is doing for their AOE

Full coloured circles. Red for enemies, Green for Friendlies and Blue for personal AOEs.

Then enable players to turn off or lower others spell effects while keeping the full coloured circles. Having overlaying rings just gets confusing especially when they are white. Bad colour choice imo.

Doesn’t anyone think about color blind players? Red/green color blindness is the most common variety and color blindness in general affects about 9% of the population.

Besides, the solid circles would just overlap. And while I’m sure that it’d be better than the current situation, but it’d also be ugly.

It’s more than easy to make circles that can be colour blind friendly. Also I’m guessing you haven’t seen Wildstars AoE system.

The circles are half transparent so that you can see the ground underneath, they are then highlighted by an opaque light coloured line. This makes is so that it’s easy to see overlapping circles but it gives the player a better understanding of where the damage/support is actually being placed. Instead of a mass of white circles that overlap to make it ridiculously hard to see anything.

This system would be superior if players were able to turn off spell effects for others.

I’ve gotten mostly used to it, but even still, sometimes find myself spamming abilities because I can’t see whats going on. A slider to reduce particle density, effect opacity, or something similar would be much appreciated.

Apparently, one of the reasons the devs refuse to give us any FOV settings is because situational awareness is so incredibly important in this game, especially in PvP. But I’m puzzled about how it’s possible to be situationally aware in a total storm of a gazillion spell effects and combat animations. I suppose situationally aware means don’t stand in the AOE field that fills your entire screen. Still at least Anet are doing their bit to reduce screen clutter by making players invisible =)

Yeah, the effects are fantastic when there’s only one or two players and mobs, but it gets a bit ridiculous in mass fights. One does get used to it over time, but some of the suggestions here would be worth looking at. One doesn’t want to lose the spectacular quality when one is soloing or in small groups, because the spectacle is fun, but one does want some means of making the graphics more practical in larger fights.

I agree, something has to be done about this. Most of the time you can’t even see the boss, it’s often very hard to spot an animation and dodge a powerful attack. And even though most of these effects are designed very well and look cool, when you have so many of them on the same spot it just looks ugly.

I agree with Void. The effects in those pictures look really gross and they are everywhere even when doing DE’s you can’t see a thing. Though I feel like they tried to tone it down because all the skills are transparent like.

It’s kind of an issue with my Thief and Mesmer.

My thief because I can’t tell what is going on, if the boss is attacking or if there is a red circle near all the player created spell effects.

My mesmer because I at times can not target the correct mobs and cast aim ground specific targeting spells reliably.

I partially blame the massive amount of effects and the other part goes to the inability to zoom out more and actually see my targets location through all the spell effects.

I never had this issue in WoW, maybe because I could zoom out more and see above my target and all the effects.

I’m pretty sure this is the main culprit to my FPS woes in WvW.

I can do big zergy fights in pve ok, but if its 2 player zergs against each other, forget about it.

Particles just DESTROY my fps lol.

Also makes looting such a chore, should just make it automatic at this point.

I agree with this. I love this game’s combat, but it’s VERY hard to know when to dodge. It’s funny that our spell effects are more vibrant than the effect used when an enemy is charging up for a devastating attack. You would think THAT effect should overpower everything else, it’s the most important.

I’d love to see an option to turn down the opacity/size of these effects. I love the way the look individually, it makes your attacks feel really powerful and good to use, so I’d hate to see ANet change them or anything. But there needs to be a way to make the action clearer without sacrificing the visual fidelity.

Signed.

I run a lot of dungeons as a guardian. Half the time I can’t see the telegraphs for attacks.
And DE’S in Orr. Sometimes I end up just standing there because I can’t see anything for an extended period of time (the entire event if there are tons of people.)

I agree for I can’t see the ‘boss’ at all whether playing range or melee.
I don’t have frame rates problems.
When many players’ effects crowd the target, it is impossible to see the animation, it’s just a blur of light effects and damage numbers.
Would be better if we have the option to tone it up or down.

This, was in Ascalonian catacombs, 5 players explo dungeon. The Huuuuuuuuge blue breath effect comes from only 1 person (guardian).

only 1 ! This is way too much :O

I have to agree, even with a group of 5 doing an instance, the particle effects become too much. I frequently can’t tell where to drop my targeting reticle or if it worked once I did. In a large event, it’s that much more ridiculous.

The game’s painterly style is perhaps a disadvantage here. The particle effects have the same lush, soft-edged quality that world has, which tends to make them hard to see through and gives them a larger visual field.

I agree. We have to get some sort of control or slider for visual effects. I even started avoiding events with too many players playing it just because of this problem. It’s just not fun nor enjoyable.
I am personally very disappointed with combat system in this game, but I am also willing to adapt and learn. Maybe I will grow to like it in time. But this visual effects abundance is too much. Entire combat system is based on quick response time and it’s almost impossible to actually be quick if you can’t see anything.

Turn down your settings if it is a problem. This seems like an issue for people with low end computers. Maybe over time they will add a feature that allows for particle effect adjustmen.

As it stands, this game runs fantastic on my mid level computer at good high and medium settings at 100+fps on average. For all the action going on in places like WvW and bigger DEs, the game runs great.

There’s no way to turn down particle effect settings.

It does help to turn off post processing.

TransparentlyOpaque is a rather ironic name for someone posting in this thread… but I think you’re missing the point. Yes, for some people the effects cause lag. But that isn’t the main issue here. The main issue is that when you get more than a handful of people together, all using spells that each have large visual effects, it very frequently results in the targeted enemy being almost totally obscured. This means that for characters where positioning is important, they cannot tell when they are in the right position. It means that professions that rely on trap-like mechanics cannot see where to place them nor when they are triggered. Most importantly, it means that you cannot see the wind-up, or telegraph, of those enemy skills that will potentially wipe out a large group of people. You also cannot see the red circles indicating enemy trap-like attacks.

How about this as a solution? The effects stay exactly as they are, but no more than two effects of the same kind can be displayed on the same target at the same time. Where appropriate, one of those effects is always yours. This would fix the visibility issues as well as the lag while retaining the integrity of the graphics.

In some weeks you can add some Sunrise and Twilight trail effects on that chaos too

Yes, in fact I already made a thread about it. This is one of my top issues I have with the game.
It’s utterly ironic how ANet has before release stated to commit itself to a clear, visual combat where you don’t have to watch your UI to see what’s going on. Then why do I only see flare vomit on my screen when I’m playing melee?

yes, to many visual effects.

There can never be enough effects.

Ironic how you’re supposed to watch the mob to see what he does to react, but you can’t react because of the spell effects. Looks great solo or with a couple of people, but it can quickly turn to mush. Sorry but it’s true. It’s a major design flaw actually.

Is there a particle density setting in this game? I just don’t recall seeing one but then I wasn’t really looking for it.

This has been an issue in every single MMO I’ve played. Now if there is a particle density setting, move the slider to the left or make the number smaller. If there isn’t then it’s a pretty big oversight by ANet.

Lowering the settings is not a solution because this is not a performance issue.

It is a solution because if there’s less particles there’s less “mess” to obstruct what the OP is talking about. Unless this game works differently than what I’ve encountered in the past.

Red Falcon.8257:

While the point you make is good and I too believe Anet will have to deal with this, you went with extreme exaggerations and sensationalism so this is a lot less likely to get to Anet properly.

This isn’t extreme. This is par for the course. I rarely see events that DON’T look like this. It’s gotten to where I actually take combat screenshots to commemorate fighting something that I can actually see, since it’s so rare.

/signed

It’s an unnecessary mess, frankly. Any meaningful tactical information essential to pulling off combos/interrupts/dodges is completely obfuscated by the perpetually exploding kaleidoscope of colour. I get’s pretty bad in PvE at times but WvW is several orders of magnitude worse. I honestly do not know how melee players manage. (I expect that they don’t, they do what everyone else does: they see a supernova of colour and just spam abilities into the middle of it thus exacerbating the issue.)

Second only to the appalling frame rate in WvW battles this is the main reason why I no longer play WvW.

Suggestions:
- Allow the ability to turn off VFX by category (fields, attack, buffs etc.).
- Set all VFX to an alpha of 50-75%.

Yes, the number of visual effects is too high. It looks like someone puked a rainbow on my screen.

Effects are just fine for me, don’t stand in the fire (if it’s damaging you)

While adding additional effects sliders may not be a bad idea, it seems a lot of people are redirecting their anger at the fact that their computer doesn’t handle GW2 well – in which case additional sliders may not even do the trick for you…

The only time I personally find effect getting in the way of mechanics is during huge zergs (much like the OP’s picture shows) in in these circumstances individual mechanics start to become irrelevant anyways. Worst case, watching your health bar is a better idea. You may be getting hit with a ballista or the like in which case less effects would not make a difference.

Short answer, yes!
It’s not hard to implement a slider to tone down other peoples effects.