Guild Wars 2

ANet please return the animation for elementalist fire staff one to the ‘old’ animation. I am not a fan of the new ‘small’ fire balls.

DMB.3906:

ANet please return the animation for elementalist fire staff one to the ‘old’ animation. I am not a fan of the new ‘small’ fire balls.

They are doing things like this to cut down on clutter. When you watch people fight in this game having not played it before, you can hardly see anything due to all of the massive flashy animations. Even as a veteran player, think about raids. I mean I would like for my engineer bomb kit #2 to still be a mushroom cloud and the F5 on the mortar kit to still be a massive beam from the sky, but when you have ten people with massive flashy animations it’s almost impossible to see important mob “tells” or things of the like.

(Not so) Great Balls of Fire! They’ve shrunk! Who would of thunk that would happen?

And I hope ANet tones down the other visual effects also. A fight where all you can see of a boss is the boss icon floating above the visual pollution is waaaayyyyyyy to much clutter.

Much smaller…

Healix.5819:

Much smaller…

Maybe that’s a little too much… But you could say the same for the F5 on he mortar kit. It’s this little dinky stick now xP

Rename it to Firebolt and make it move faster:)

You call that a fireball !!!

ZachAttack.3957:

DMB.3906:

ANet please return the animation for elementalist fire staff one to the ‘old’ animation. I am not a fan of the new ‘small’ fire balls.

They are doing things like this to cut down on clutter. When you watch people fight in this game having not played it before, you can hardly see anything due to all of the massive flashy animations. Even as a veteran player, think about raids. I mean I would like for my engineer bomb kit #2 to still be a mushroom cloud and the F5 on the mortar kit to still be a massive beam from the sky, but when you have ten people with massive flashy animations it’s almost impossible to see important mob “tells” or things of the like.

I agree with the intent. However, all other elementalist spells seam to be unchanged. I would have thought the larger & flashier AOE spells would have received the same visual treatment.

i don’t think the projectile was the problem, it’s when bosses are engulfed with particle effects as a result of skills

It’s the most used skill by my ele(I bet not only mine). It looked so powerful. Now you made it look like burning kitten. Bring the effect back to us, minimize for others. It’s so simple.

edit.
Or just implement global option “minimize skill effects”. Let the gamers choose. Is is really that hard?

Agree. Or give us option Anet. The server doenst send graphic info (would be way to much overhead.) The server send ‘use animation x’ in 8 bit encriptions or something liek that. When that 8 bit code hits your library, and that library has the old version, you still see old version.

Long story short, it’s ultra simple for Anet to program two libraries, one of old agressive skill animations, and one ‘dumbed down, very child friendly’ version. We get to choose, we win all.

Or you can keep on doing same Anet. I suppose Pvp is about 20% of total gw2 player. 20% (wich not even all of them may like it) gets an ‘improvement’, 80% gets an immersion nerf. Not really the way to do this, now is it?

Maybe thats why it was changed since to many elementalists useing it hid the monster from the rest of the classes

I just logged in and tested it.

Oh my god… it was such a cool looking animation, why did they have to butcher it.

My Charr looks beyond ridiculous now lol

Don’t you love it when great effects are nerfed in the name of #ESPORTS? :^)

By far my most favorite skill animation, the thing that made me roll Ele in the first place, ruined…

Agreed – please make the balls bigger.

Either make it bigger or give it a more accurate name. Right now it’s more of a Fire Dart.

I sympathise having seen changes to things like Axe on necro and other animations changed. They are generally steadfast in not reversing such changes though (altho the axe one was to counter an exploit which is fair enough…it just was an extremely poor substitute animation).

Having said that, the Ele forum has a growing thread – I’d def add feedback to that since general discussion loses visibility fast

They ruined the dreamer, now fire ball. What’s next? Who keeps doing this.

I have no problems with the ele fireball, lol. It seems Anet is under pressure after too many complaints about skill cluster.

They just needed to tone down the bright lights in my opinion. But oh well.

Lumpy.8760:

i don’t think the projectile was the problem, it’s when bosses are engulfed with particle effects as a result of skills

This. Which means guardians.

Uhm….noob question here, when you said fireball, you mean ele’s staff skill 1 right? I have several eles but only 1 uses staff, and i gave her the bifrost, so i might missed out on something here (bifrost make all skill 1 looks like rainbow dart, regardless of attunement)

Apologies for the blank original post, it seems it bugged out when I tried posting it, here’s what it said:

So, I hate to be this guy but… Anet can you please, please, PLEASE stop catering exclusively to the players running a toaster and give us an option to increase visual effects (the so called visual noise)? If we can run the effects without gamebreaking results, we should have the option to do so, instead we got hit by a wave of FX reductions that turned Fireball into a spark, Gravity Well became nearly invisible after the first pulse, Dragon’s Maw became ACTUALLY invisible after the bite, and the change that occured a long time ago: Orbital Strike is pathetic.

Please, allow us the option to feel that we didn’t buy brand new and powerful hardware changes to play something a PlayStation 2 could run.

I’m pretty sure it’s for esports spectating and not for performance reasons, which is even worse. I’m not sure why they would think that it’s particles of all things that’s keeping GW2 esports from being a thing.

I think they’re doing it because it can be hard to see what’s going on in pvp(esports) and in big boss fights with all the particle effects and whatnot. They really should make it a toggle though because I think most people really like the effects outside of specific circumstances. I like most do not give a kitten about esports.

All my graphics are moderately low, all clutter stuff I could turn off is turned off. When I started 2 years ago (my graphic settings were even lower back then) I spent 2 weeks in Queens Gauntlet and laughed my kitten off because of the gigantic fireballs everywhere – that was really the best for me as no one could possibly see a thing.
That being said – I hate Guardians Fire and Ice effect with a passion – there only needs to be one around and you have no chance to see the Boss – if you’re lucky you might see the outlines.
The better solution now would’ve been (if possible) to have an option to soften the clutter from other people and still see your own and another to phase out all clutter. But maybe that’s not possible.
Anyway – in my 2 years here I’ve seen Dwayna’s animations once – everything else looked more of less like the screenshots.
The Tower Lord is on a ledge – he stomp-pushes everyone without stability from said ledge and probably out of the tower – the animation is clear to see – without clutter. Otherwise: good luck.

So, while I get that having the own animations nerfed is annoying: something had to be done – no matter whether it’s PvE, WvW or PvP.

What a stupid change.

They should copy WoW and just tone down the effecrs of other players spells, not completely destroy the visuals on your own skills.

Just went to test it.

Holy kitten this is kittening terrible.

Daralii.8940:

I’m pretty sure it’s for esports spectating and not for performance reasons, which is even worse. I’m not sure why they would think that it’s particles of all things that’s keeping GW2 esports from being a thing.

Honestly they need to just give up on esports already. That ship not only sailed, but it was never docked for GW2 in the first place.

Or at least do what FF14 does and allow US to select if “visual noise” is reduced.

Celestina.2894:

Daralii.8940:

I’m pretty sure it’s for esports spectating and not for performance reasons, which is even worse. I’m not sure why they would think that it’s particles of all things that’s keeping GW2 esports from being a thing.

Honestly they need to just give up on esports already. That ship not only sailed, but it was never docked for GW2 in the first place.

Or at least do what FF14 does and allow US to select if “visual noise” is reduced.

Visual noise has needed a slider for some time. I’ll never understand Anet’s negligence when it comes to allowing players certain visual options (colorblind mode, UI modifications, and such).

Agreed on the esports fascination as well. I’ve been pondering whether or not to go through certain precursor collections and am hesitant to even start since they refuse to split skills and traits.

Elementalists Fireball went from being basketball sized ball of flame to being a tennisball with some glow around it. This is bullkitten.

Jana.6831:

Anyway – in my 2 years here I’ve seen Dwayna’s animations once – everything else looked more of less like the screenshots.

I had to add my own =D

But yeah. The trouble isn’t so much the projectile/explosion itself, it’s the ginky scaling on some models. Normalise them, diminish them or whatever – make the special attack animation overwrite all other effects or temporarily suppress them… whatever. Diminishing the ‘coolness’ of some effects for a very slim practicality bonus is just a straight no-no.

Fireball went from being a basketball sized flaming ball of fire to a tennisball with some glow effect. This is unacceptable and completely destroys the visual feel of the class.

Daralii.8940:

Don’t you love it when great effects are nerfed in the name of #ESPORTS? :^)

Don’t forget to buy lots of PvE content in the gemstore to continue supporting blanket nerfs and changes.

I suppose I never thought anyone could get tired eyes from GW2 since it has such weak FX compared to other MMOs like Black Desert, Tera or Warframe, but if that is a problem it’s just another reason why we should have options to customize FX showing in our screen.

esports? the gw2 competative combat is literally the worst fighting in an mmo i have ever seen, AND I PLAYED RUNESCAPE, the time to kill is so high its ridiculous and every match becomes about who can cap the points first because GOOD LUCK getting anybody off of them long enough to cap the point before the inevitable 60 second slap fest/rollfest/healfest that is the combat

esports in gw2? give up anet

Duke Nukem.6783:

esports? the gw2 competative combat is literally the worst fighting in an mmo i have ever seen, AND I PLAYED RUNESCAPE, the time to kill is so high its ridiculous and every match becomes about who can cap the points first because GOOD LUCK getting anybody off of them long enough to cap the point before the inevitable 60 second slap fest/rollfest/healfest that is the combat

esports in gw2? give up anet

To be honest I never understood why Anet thought it would take off as a major Esport in the first place.

Some of the choices didn’t make sense. They are now much harder to see whether or alone or in a clutter than they were before.

This was never about low-end computers.

Duke Nukem.6783:

esports? the gw2 competative combat is literally the worst fighting in an mmo i have ever seen, AND I PLAYED RUNESCAPE, the time to kill is so high its ridiculous and every match becomes about who can cap the points first because GOOD LUCK getting anybody off of them long enough to cap the point before the inevitable 60 second slap fest/rollfest/healfest that is the combat

esports in gw2? give up anet

Sad how this .gif was made nearly three years ago and little has changed:

what I dont understand, is Why is the visual nerf a thing when there is a literal OPTION in the settings to do this?

Why make it baseline and ruin classes that you know, rely on explosions and blasts of arcane magic?

I completely agree with this. My engineer no longer has an orbital cannon, and now my guardian angel of light is more a guardian angel of flashlight. The code infrastructure is in place for those who need a clearer option. Use that. There’s really no excuse here.

dreadicon.5840:

I completely agree with this. My engineer no longer has an orbital cannon, and now my guardian angel of light is more a guardian angel of flashlight. The code infrastructure is in place for those who need a clearer option. Use that. There’s really no excuse here.

Hate to break it to you mate, but as an engi myself…..our whole lineup got utterly destroyed. everything from flamethrower to mortar is smaller, unnoticable, and some skill effects happen so fast you dont even see it.

For my ele mates as well, I truly feel your pain, staff has just about had it visually, and D/D is just as bad.

dreadicon.5840:

I completely agree with this. My engineer no longer has an orbital cannon, and now my guardian angel of light is more a guardian angel of flashlight. The code infrastructure is in place for those who need a clearer option. Use that. There’s really no excuse here.

The infrastructure doesn’t appear to work properly, is the problem. The effects slider has never done much of anything, certainly not enough that it eliminates the problem in large encounters. So instead of fixing it, it seems their new fix is just to go through and manually tone everything down as “needed”.

Having now actually logged onto one of my eles, i… i… I just feel so inadequate =X

Dear ANET,

I love you very much. It is the truth. You have made a game that I have played for many hours, and greatly enjoy to share with friends.

However, you have ruined an animation I greatly enjoyed by turning it into a joke. When I first heard of the change, I though people were exaggerating. This was not so. It is actually tennis ball sized.

This is not game-breaking, and I am not threatening to leave or anything, but I seriously doubt that any measure of reasoned thought went into the new animation. It is actually more underwhelming than “flare” from GW1…I never thought that this could be true of GW2, but it is.

Please reconsider your animation choices, this was truly a poorly designed ‘fix’ for the visual noise problem.

Sincerely,
Darksabre (now and forever an ele).

Electro.4173:

dreadicon.5840:

I completely agree with this. My engineer no longer has an orbital cannon, and now my guardian angel of light is more a guardian angel of flashlight. The code infrastructure is in place for those who need a clearer option. Use that. There’s really no excuse here.

The infrastructure doesn’t appear to work properly, is the problem. The effects slider has never done much of anything, certainly not enough that it eliminates the problem in large encounters. So instead of fixing it, it seems their new fix is just to go through and manually tone everything down as “needed”.

The thing is, the sliders were optional. This “fix” is applied to everyone wether people like it or not, and that is just bad.

It looks absurd. The wind up doesn’t match the launch, and the missile is dwarfed by all the other elements’ auto attacks.

This is why every other MMO ever has the option to reduce other players’ particle effects.

Simple solution that will make everyone happy…add an option to either enable or disable toned down effects, that way people that hate the clutter or run e-sports can disable it, but those who love the effects can keep it..maybe even make it set to low medium and high? It’s a game we have options

Darksabre Aldarion.4159:

Dear ANET,

I love you very much. It is the truth. You have made a game that I have played for many hours, and greatly enjoy to share with friends.

However, you have ruined an animation I greatly enjoyed by turning it into a joke. When I first heard of the change, I though people were exaggerating. This was not so. It is actually tennis ball sized.

This is not game-breaking, and I am not threatening to leave or anything, but I seriously doubt that any measure of reasoned thought went into the new animation. It is actually more underwhelming than “flare” from GW1…I never thought that this could be true of GW2, but it is.

Please reconsider your animation choices, this was truly a poorly designed ‘fix’ for the visual noise problem.

Sincerely,
Darksabre (now and forever an ele).

I feel much the same way, but i do wonder – how many unambiguously terrible changes am i willing to put up with? when do we draw the line and say, “this is not the game i fell in love with, and it is moving in a direction i do not care to follow”?