Guild Wars 2

Will there ever be an option for us to do this? The game is beautiful and it drives me crazy that I can’t see it in combat. It also makes it very difficult to see “red circles” or really avoid attacks at all. I can’t even find my own character in this screenshot I took earlier in the week:
http://i.imgur.com/CkvIaBt.jpg

Options>
Graphics>
check the box for effect LOD

That is the most you can do to turn down particle effects. In my experience the difference is minimal though.

Turning down particles has been asked for since beta and apparently will never happen.

The LOD does nothing, really.

‘Play the game not the UI’
….Oh well….

Wow I didn’t know the northern lights were in this game! So cool!

People having been raising this complaint since the original Beta.

So far nothing. I have to assume it is functioning as they intended.

However, I do agree it is WAY to much. Maybe once day we’ll get a slider or something. Maybe.

Unfortunatly its a Unavoidable problem due to more people= more effects and even if they did turn down the partical effects it does not restrict Graphic loading on your Pc so you’d still have quite a lot of Partical effects because of said amount of people.

in the end this problem is only Solved by not Zerging or using Flashy Animation or weapon skins.

in other words its not Fixable for Large scale content only possible for Pvp content / or small scale content but that right now partical effects of Small scale is contolable due to the lack of players.

I don’t think that’s really true. Back in the day of old PCs, in games like EQ, you had raids with tons of people. Granted, the game wasn’t designed to be as flashy as GW2 is, but you could still limit or turn off the particle effects that appeared. That way you could not only keep your PC from crashing, but could see what was happening.

It’s kind of silly to me to have active combat like GW2 has and then totally obscure it in a sea of effects like is common.

I’ve wanted this forever.

Maybe with raids they will see the need of turning particle effects down.

“Fight what cannot be seen.” should be the Whispers saying

If by “turn down” you mean “add more and more particles per armor/weapon/skill slot every month with little to no optimization” you’re in for a treat!

Seriously, though, on my main pc I run ultra+inspector at 32Xsgssaa but on a big monitor it’s lovely. On the 3 other devices I play GW2 on at times, it’s very harsh. I do think that if there was an easy solution that it would have been implemented by now.

Waaaaaat particle effects is fiiiiine.

Look at the bright side. At least you’re not engineers.

Don’t forget how players would deploy dozens of sentries in EOTM keeps to force massive FPS drops on invading players

Made scoring kills on opposing players stupid easy with ACs when their reaction time is cut in half

Dawdler.8521:

Waaaaaat particle effects is fiiiiine.

Look at the bright side. At least you’re not engineers.

I just don’t understand how there can be screenshots like these and folks at ANet look at them and go “Yup, this is exactly how we want it to look!”

Watch out for the one-shot abilities in HoT’s more challenging content.

Because I mainly WVW, I would like to see an option like Effect LOD that does not hide cow poison (mainly b/c of the supply removal) or CC effects (static field).

I’ll be honest: this is one of the biggest reasons, along with a lack of movable UI elements, that I am hesitant to try and pick up the game again, and I can’t help but wonder if I’m alone on this. The inability to properly engage with the game’s combat (because it’s reliant on something that’s nearly impossible to see) is a massive turn-off.

This was always one of those glaring problems I’ve had with this game. Kind of surprised it hasn’t been addressed already. Or was it one of those “artistic vision” deals?

I would love to see an effects slider because I would love to see what’s going on in combats.

I like all the shiny explosions

Sometimes it reminds me of Geometry Wars

It’s why pvp in this game is a joke, unwatchable for the average person.
I had not played this game in a long time, came on to do some trading before expansion and then started to play and once i did some group play i remembered one of the reasons i didn’t like this game. I’d use a hack if there was one. Those effects would be causing some eye damage over long periods of time.
They fixed the fov issue i see, other than that i’ve seen very little work on the game. People used to have to use a nvidia program to set their own fov.
Good thing i didn’t buy the expansion yet, Raids will be a joke with all this lol.

Prophet.6257:

People having been raising this complaint since the original Beta.

So far nothing. I have to assume it is functioning as they intended.

However, I do agree it is WAY to much. Maybe once day we’ll get a slider or something. Maybe.

Wrong Anet has toned them done since release, please free to look at patch notes or gw2 wiki for it. IMHO they still can be toned down even more!

Exactly, there HAS to be an option to tone them down. Since Arenanet is shifting towards challenging 10 man cotent (raids), they have to make options available to make it possible to reliably play 10 man content. If those raids are anything more than world bosses (press 1 while having no clue what’s going on), the current particle system will make them impossible.

Also, I believe this will help out the “2 fps halp” people you see at the Frozen Maw / Karka Queen / Tequatl.

We have a guildie with epilepsy who can’t play certain elements of the game because of the effects. Our guildie had a really bad time of it with one of the fractals – a snow blind one. CoF is another that is a real problem and can’t be played. The flamethrower on the engineer is a ‘repeat offender’ as well. For me – well some of the effects can trigger migraines if I’m playing the game for too long (zerging in EoTM for example).

I love the slider suggestion….if devs could give us the ability to tone down the effects and soften the patterns (white on black for example), that would be most excellent!

fizzypetal.7936:

We have a guildie with epilepsy who can’t play certain elements of the game because of the effects. Our guildie had a really bad time of it with one of the fractals – a snow blind one. CoF is another that is a real problem and can’t be played. The flamethrower on the engineer is a ‘repeat offender’ as well. For me – well some of the effects can trigger migraines if I’m playing the game for too long (zerging in EoTM for example).

I love the slider suggestion….if devs could give us the ability to tone down the effects and soften the patterns (white on black for example), that would be most excellent!

I am said guildie, therefore I echo this request. The Snowblind fractal and I are so not friends right now.

I still wonder how all these “learn to dodge” folks seem to have no problems to
see everything there so they can dodge really every single attack.

Oh yeah .. and in the end this is simply another reason while many people prefer
to stay ranged .. the effects are by far not that bad like on these screens if you stay
away a little bit.

Still need this option. Still don’t have.

I just want the clicky checkbox from City of Heroes, another particle heavy game. That one simply turned off all particle effects that couldn’t interact with you. So all allied buff auras, extra effects other than projectiles for allies, etc.

When you turned it on, all you saw were simple melee animations and simple projectiles with no “splash” animations. You only saw VFX from aura type abilities when they were something you could interact with (usually by standing in it, in GW2 this would be only the most recent combo field) You still saw all of your own particle effects normally, and those from mobs.

That game was also unplayable in groups without that option.

Beldin.5498:

I still wonder how all these “learn to dodge” folks seem to have no problems to
see everything there so they can dodge really every single attack.

Oh yeah .. and in the end this is simply another reason while many people prefer
to stay ranged .. the effects are by far not that bad like on these screens if you stay
away a little bit.

I wonder as well (though I’ve come to realize they are probably just more coordinated with blinds, reflects, blocks, etc), and I get so annoyed when I’m downed because I simply could not see the tell of an attack. I admit sometimes in dungeons I’m just sloppy, but there are a few encounters where I try so hard to concentrate and just cannot see what’s happening…

https://youtu.be/HXf9qlihYoM?t=1917

Comes as no surprise.