Signed, and also, this is not a perfomance issue (been stated many times). I like the effects but dont get anything out of a white cloud of madness. I even stopped playing elementalist because alot of the effects are just too annoying.
It is not unreasonable to add some more settings to adjust these aspects.
Also agree here, particle effects are way too over the top, especially trebuchet and grenade explosions. It’s really not necessary, and I’d definitely embrace an option to turn them down, I really couldn’t care less about the flashy explosions, rather, where I place it and how I react to it – which is impossible if it fills my screen or covers the enemy.
Definately too many particle effects for me during mass fights. What makes it worse for me is that on my Asura, the camera pivotal point is very low to the ground. So when the camera is blocked because of a rock or fence and it zooms in, I get a very low point of view and can’t see the mobs or red circles at all.
I really want to turn particle effects down.
It’s definitely an issue. I didn’t notice as much as a mesmer, but it hit me hard when I started playing my guardian alt. There were times when I could barely make out my character – let alone see where to position my targeting circles (or mouse for that matter).
One nice thing I remember from my very brief time with TERA was a little option to scale down effects in groups. Effects in big group fights were deminished enough so that you could still see what you were doing and what your teammates were doing.
The glowing blob of particles and lights is pretty, but it makes me feel like I’m fighting with a flashlight in front of my eyes.
I’d agree with this. The obscuring effect of many abilities makes it very difficult to know when to dodge or interrupt. This is a particular problem with guardian abilities: I literally have to turn down my gamma when I’m playing with guardians.
Agreed, too many particle effects. I don’t like it when I can’t see the champion I’m fighting; it makes harder to see his animation and react properly to it, which is how the game was to be played. On a side note: Please do something about the “condition” hearts. They don’t blend-in well with the art and look so out of place, would appreciatte a new icon for that and a bit smaller. Keep up the good work A-net.
To me it’s not a big deal but I understand if it’s lagging (FPS “lag”) your system it’s huge.
But relating to this issue is that I’m constantly losing my mouse in that noise. Losing my mouse is waaaay more important to me than the actual noise. Please, please make the mouse bigger, more obvious, or something.
Perhaps they could introduce a setting that either automatically scaled down the particle density/opacity of effects depending on how many players are on-screen, or a setting to make one’s own effects dominant, while reducing the density/opacity of every other player effect.
I’ve seen this in some other games, the best example I can think of is RIFT, which also has similar public fights against bosses sometimes (the Rift events, which usually culminate in a boss battle that anyone can join in on). It has a setting which automatically tones down the effects from other players, while keeping yours emphasized.
It was a real godsend when they patched that in for that game, and I think it would be great for GW2 as well.
The phrase “Can’t see @#&%, Cap’n!” has become common on my voice server. Just a running joke for whenever we get slammed by an attack we never saw coming as a result of these over the top spell effects that have been a problem since the press beta.
Guildmaster of Nerd Herd [NERD] (Tarnished Coast)
Nethalia Frostmane [Ranger], Lyzanxia Unsu [Engineer]
Torg Darkmaw [Thief], Zekka The Architect [Elementalist]
Agreed, OP. It’s one glaring flaw in the game as it is now. I love the effects, as they are, but I would say that the game should adaptively reduce the intensity of the effects based on the number of players attacking in a given area. Like if ten people are attacking, those effects should be reduced by 1/10 in their intensity, or something similar.
I agree. I have a very good pc and very solid FPS that never really drops.
Still, I absolutely hate playing with guardians and to a slightly lesser extent some elementalists and some mesmers because their particle effects are far too flashy and block out a lot of information that I absolutely need when playing melee. Ranger is also annoying on some bosses like the spider in TA up, where the shortbow hit indicator looks exactly like the boss’ wind up effect (or at least I think this because of rangers, might be something else).
I agree. I really like the idea of playing by looking at animation and environment instead of UI but I can’t see a kitten thing in group combat. Less opac effects, a max number of effect on a single location, display red circles above effects, an opaque glow around the target the same way we can see friends through walls in L4D, a castbar, or whatever. I can’t see anything, I can’t dodge. The hardest part of the game is understanding what’s happening.
1. Caudecus’s manor 5 players explorable dungeon 2. WvWvW taking a keep 3. Dynamic group Event in Cursed Shore, open world
The problem is that the ennemies are hidden behind the effects, even in 5 players fights. Champion risen abomination, it’s a big mob but still we can barely see what’s goin on.
I’m not sure if any sliders could help, because the effects have just been designed with this foggy style (but anet knows this better than me). My opinion is that they need a global rework to make them work as a whole but they probably wouldn’t do this…
This is why i laugh when they think this game can become an esport, no it can’t, the spectators need to understand what they’re watching and the spell effects in this game make it one big blur.
Take a look at dota 2, yeh no super flashy BS and specators know exactly what each player is casting and what item they are using.
Spell effects are meant to to give clear information.
BTW try being asura, you can’t see yourself in this game when fighting in a group. It’s so messed up.
I’ve always imagined a scenario where, upon detecting a large concentration of entities (players, mobs, objects, whatever), the UI slightly adapts to the situation. Instead of having to look through the zillions of particles to find visual cues, the UI itself will indicate danger. Red circles will shine more vividly and take visual priority over everything else (transparent through players and other effects), small “!” icons flash when an attack is imminent on your character (preferably showing up in the direction of the attack as well, above the attacking mob’s head for example), and stuff like that.
As much as I like some of the visual effects, I must agree.
The visual pollution is a bit high. Sometimes it’s pretty hard to actually discern information from what you’re seeing.
Heck yes. I play a grenade engineer and there are times where I actually have to stop dps to try and figure out just where the heck my target actually is. There’s so much smoke / glitter / sparkly razzle dazzle that the enemy could be behind a corner giggling like a fool for all I know.
Change it so we can limit who’s fx we see maybe? I duno, something NEEDS to be done about this tho. This coupled with the culling so that NPC’s and people show up on my screen at a reasonable rate would be wonderful.
I can’t believe no one has said this yet. Go into your graphical settings and turn “post processing” effects to none. It takes off most of those particle effects and doesn’t make the game suffer graphically.
Yrs turning off post processing makes the screen less glowy but it doesn’t solve the inherent problem that you can’t use your skills skillfully because you have no clue what’s going on.
We need an OPTIONAL OPTIONAL OPTIONAL “simple combat visuals” setting that:
shows only combo fields, your skills, and skills of enemies
gives targeted enemy a thick red outline like Diablo 3 so you can actually see which direction he’s facing, and how his body is moving. (does anyone have a screenshot of what I’m talking about? I haven’t played d3)
What the hell, are you using some sort of filter or different Graphical control panel settings?
My rendering isn’t anywhere near what you’re showing. 0.o
(Yeah, i’m using the full deal on 1920×1080 with supersampling. Although on 2048 everythings just too tiny.)
Turn off Post procesing or lower it to mid range,
Edit; Nevermind i see what the guy above me did tharr.
Actually, gets me back to the SMAA filter. =x does just that reduces the effectiveness of these effects to a subliminal amount.
I hate FXAA filtering =s
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.
Those screen shots look like pretty good evidence to me. I thought the OP was pretty much spot on what you’re recommending.
Does anyone know if there was any official response regarding this? I mean are they aware of the fact it’s so distracting, are they doing anything on it or would that be to big of a change for them to do now.
I would also like to see an option to turn those effects down (not off).
the most problem is those bosses which you need to observe to actually know when to dodge so they wont 1-shot you >_> and if they are all covered with this crazy flashy kitten i dont stand even a chance -__-
It is very bad visually. I use the quick cast option and I can never find the mouse arrow.Anet please make it easier to spot this as well – I end of firing things off in left field cause I dont know where it is.
And man in orr with 50+ people it is just unreal, my screen turns white and I am squinting looking for my damage #s in hope that I am close enough to do damage or have the right one targeted cause you cant see em.
Would be great to be able to turn the effects of others down. My wife’s system is struggling when with a group of players. On my system, I find it visually difficult to play and watch when the screen is a vast canvas of colors.
Short answer, yes!
It’s not hard to implement a slider to tone down other peoples effects.
Correct. Which is why every other “north american” MMO has had the option to “only show your own effects” both for icons and particles, since 2005.
How ArenaNet missed implementing this feature is hard to imagine. You get more than 5 people attacking any single target and this problem is immediately obvious. The entire open world PvE Dynamic Event “boss thing” is intended to be more than 5 people attacking a single target. Um… ok.
All I want to see is the location of combo fields and my own particle effects. In particular, I cannot stand the strobe light effect that mesmers throw down. How a designer thought that would be good? In what universe is a strobe light a good particle effect? Sheesh.
I apologize if there is a new topic on this issue, but I wanted to say that after coming back to this game and playing Queen Jubilee events, this is still a major issue it appears. I don’t think i have seen one single boss in the new group boss events. All due to the effects. I literally have everything on max graphics settings. Removing Post processing helps a little but, but barely.
For once, the term “killing the game” is 100% correct. The particle effects all over the screen has been an issue since day 1. It’s TERRIBLE during combat in groups.
I honestly feel like the “action combat” that was implemented was shoe horned in at the last minute to compete with TERA. The mob mechanics and how the game plays contradicts action combat. Action combat is about strategy, reflexes and tells. All I can TELL when playing GW2 in groups is the amount of particle effects is too much. I can’t see the tells, I can’t see my AoE targeting. I can’t tell the difference between friendly mobs and enemy mobs. It’s just a pure clusterkitten and it’s BEEN that way.
Like I ask several times. Do the people at ArenaNet actually play the game? Or do they just play on their special dev servers and ignore what’s actually happening?
9/10 I don’t know what’s killing me, if I do I didn’t know when the attack was sent out or why. When enemy NPCs inflict reflect damage I’m usually at 50% before I even notice.
At this point they’re NEVER going to refine the combat, the least they can do is have some options for particle effects to turn them all the way off so players can only see theirs and MAYBE their groups.
ArenaNet does NOT play Guild Wars 2. This can’t be.
We need a way to drastically turn down spell effects. The recently added options setting didn’t help at all. How am I supposed to dodge if I can’t even see what I’m dodging? When a boss is preparing a big attack and all I see is fire and tons of glow effects? :/
I do agree that there is a little bit of an issue with the boss being hidden by all the sparklies. In doing the pavilion, I look for the symbol above the boss’ head and toss my ground targeted aoe in the general area since I can’t actually see where it is standing.
I have some of this issue in the open world as well (Queensdale Troll anyone?), where you just can’t click on it, you can’t see it, and its a nightmare to target it if other things are around.
I’m not quite sure how it could be fixed though. I mean, we like the weapon affects. We like to see that we are hitting/doing damage. So on and so forth. Making the foe bigger may not necessarily work, I mean sure its a quick logical fix, but how does it fit into the game perspective, the lore? I do prefer some realism for immersive purposes.
Don’t look at me like that. Whatever you’ve heard, it’s probably not true.
But yeah, the supposed new system for reducing spell effects doesn’t seem to have done squat.
Actually, I’m pretty sure it just makes me lag terribly…
I find it extremely frustrating. The effects will start to tone down, and then everything starts running in slow motion. My normal 8fps drops to like 2…. Srsly can’t wait until I can just upgrade my system.
Don’t look at me like that. Whatever you’ve heard, it’s probably not true.
