Guild Wars 2

NinjaWursti.9627:

The problem really is that there is no solution in group battles larger than 10 or 15 players. No matter how small the effects are, you wont be able to fully tell what’s going on.

A-Net should have left that to the discretion of the player as a toggle-option. In addition, some players will never do raids; so, to nerf visual effects for such a small percentage of game content for everyone across the board is just wrong.

Losing the detailed visual effects feels like finally buying your beautiful pristine dream car, only to have it transformed into an ugly wreck by a speeding reckless driver who broadsided your car after he ran a red light. In other words, I really enjoyed the visual special effects, but now they feel generic & lackluster. Since the nerf, many times the effects are totally invisible. It’s a shame I bought an expensive graphics card for GW2; what’s the point now?

Fireball is ridiculously like the rest of these visual noise reductions and no answer or whatsoever from anet .. poor.

everytime i use my wells or use the fireball skill i want to puke.

This was reported 3 or 4 days ago, what do you expect, instant results? Pay them 1 million dollars so they can hire several programmers and animators to do the job in one day.

This may be a work in progress. They may be toning down the kittening annoying, screen cluttering visual effects and deploying them bit by bit. They may also be working on an option for certain players to retain the old visual effects.

HaxTester.9816:

This was reported 3 or 4 days ago, what do you expect, instant results? Pay them 1 million dollars so they can hire several programmers and animators to do the job in one day.

This may be a work in progress. They may be toning down the kittening annoying, screen cluttering visual effects and deploying them bit by bit. They may also be working on an option for certain players to retain the old visual effects.

Maybe they are working on the option to tone down the visual effects or maybe they are not. However, they haven’t stated that they are working on such an option, so until they do so it is good to remind them that it is something that they should do.

HaxTester.9816:

This was reported 3 or 4 days ago, what do you expect, instant results? Pay them 1 million dollars so they can hire several programmers and animators to do the job in one day.

This may be a work in progress. They may be toning down the kittening annoying, screen cluttering visual effects and deploying them bit by bit. They may also be working on an option for certain players to retain the old visual effects.

A simple red response only takes a few minutes.

HaxTester.9816:

Pay them 1 million dollars so they can hire several programmers and animators to do the job in one day.

oh… wow… uh… :|

the current team is more than capable of doing this on their own. there is no need to spend money on other programmers. (: i dont mind how long it takes for them to fix the problem. i dont think anyone here is complaining about that either. it is more so the fact that there has been zero response from ArenaNet so far.

we just want to make sure that they see the issue is all. :]

I miss my fireball, it used to feel impactful now it just feels like I’m tossing a tennis ball that does big damage for no reason.

OMG this was so depressing!
I was on my Elementalist and my Fireball animation was so tiny!
I thought you people were joking about the animation nerfs but oh no… It’s REAL…

Please ArenaNet give us back the old animation FX!
Give us an Option to decide if we want to tone it down or raise it up but dont take away the option for those who liked the flashy animation effects. =(

I thought PC gaming was all about options? Please bring it back </3

I kinda agree with you guys, with the lack of immediate response, it kinda feels like we are being ignored and frustrating sometimes. We are paying customers after all (and potential buyers of gems as well). Maybe some note from our mediators that they have forwarded concerns to the devs would be nice (although it’s not a promise they will do the bidding of thread posters). But judging from this “visual nerfs” thread, they do listen to the community. The problem with too much visual effects had been brought up several times in the forums, and here we are, changes to the visual effects.

So far we have:

• Orbital Strike looks completely wrong. The skill deals high damage but has one of the tiniest visual effects in the game, clearly marking it as unimportant when looking at it. Plus if any dev has ever played C&C, ask them whether they’d like the Ion Cannon to look like this. :P
• Chronomancer wells keep their ground art and the butterfly explosion at the end (good), but lost much of the pulses. Honestly these could be ok, but considering how damaging or fight-changing some of them are, again, the art doesn’t match the relative importance.
• Elementalist Fireball is just… sad.
• Elementalist Fireball affecting other skills is bogus. The FGS, an elite skill having one of the fanciest AA animations in the game, now looks like a pea shooter. Great.

Carighan.6758:

So far we have:

• Orbital Strike looks completely wrong. The skill deals high damage but has one of the tiniest visual effects in the game, clearly marking it as unimportant when looking at it. Plus if any dev has ever played C&C, ask them whether they’d like the Ion Cannon to look like this. :P
• Chronomancer wells keep their ground art and the butterfly explosion at the end (good), but lost much of the pulses. Honestly these could be ok, but considering how damaging or fight-changing some of them are, again, the art doesn’t match the relative importance.
• Elementalist Fireball is just… sad.
• Elementalist Fireball affecting other skills is bogus. The FGS, an elite skill having one of the fanciest AA animations in the game, now looks like a pea shooter. Great.

All of them good points. Also, orbital strike and some of the mesmer wells aren’t the only impactful skills that were made much less visible. Overload air is a pretty powerful skill and is now very hard to see in some situations. The cloud used to help a lot with this.

How did they nerf MattVisual?

Carighan.6758:

So far we have:

• Orbital Strike looks completely wrong. The skill deals high damage but has one of the tiniest visual effects in the game, clearly marking it as unimportant when looking at it. Plus if any dev has ever played C&C, ask them whether they’d like the Ion Cannon to look like this. :P
• Chronomancer wells keep their ground art and the butterfly explosion at the end (good), but lost much of the pulses. Honestly these could be ok, but considering how damaging or fight-changing some of them are, again, the art doesn’t match the relative importance.
• Elementalist Fireball is just… sad.
• Elementalist Fireball affecting other skills is bogus. The FGS, an elite skill having one of the fanciest AA animations in the game, now looks like a pea shooter. Great.

• All Dragonhunter Traps and LB 5 were toned down as well.
• As for Engineer, some explosions for the Bomb and Grenade Kit happen so fast now that they could be missed in combat.

I don’t play many other professions, so I can’t comment for them.

Arenanet, you continue to disappoint and frustrate me with seemingly EVERY change you make to this game lately.
Yet again, you guys go and do something just so utterly…stupid and unnecessary and further diminish my enjoyment of GW. I can only take so much of this garbage before I am forced to give up on your franchise and move on. This isn’t a threat, this is just the increasingly probable consequence of your actions. I don’t want to do that. Really, really don’t.
I’ve been a big fan and a VERY active player since sometime before Nightfall came out in 06. I’ve spent a LOT of hours ingame, and I’ve spent a sizable amount of money supporting this game, a fair amount being extra items from both the gw1 and gw2 ingame stores. I really would like to continue supporting GW monetarily. And, for whatever it may be worth, I have often in the past supported and defended you in an admittedly fanboy-ish manner against those that do nothing but tear you and your game down.
Can’t say I do that much anymore.
Its really sad, considering how I always thought gw1’s biggest drawback was its, quite frankly, lackluster skill animations. Conversely, gw2’s amazing skill animations and visual effects are a big part of whats held me in these past three years. Now, you’re taking that away…..
Change it back. Do it, and do it soon. Don’t think you can ignore us.
Are the original animations and effects causing problems for people in large groups? Figure Something Else Out.
There are plenty of suggestions already on this thread you can check out.
So, please, stop diminishing your game. Return the original animations and visuals. And do yourselves a favor: if you are in fact do a lot of these things for the sake of getting into the esports niche….don’t. Just stop trying to focus your efforts and franchise into such an obscure thing. Just make a good game.

Just came by to bump this and share a proper reaction to this mess:

https://youtu.be/zeEF3GYEEro?t=2m34s

;)

I’m not even playing elementalist but seeing those fireballs on the staff and the FGS really made me sad. It just looks awful and puny Q.Q
Plz give us back the awesome fireballs not those sparks we got now…
I mean cull down the explosion on impact a bit if you must, but the projectile itself never was an issue imo.

Carighan.6758:

Chronomancer wells keep their ground art and the butterfly explosion at the end (good), but lost much of the pulses. Honestly these could be ok…

No, it’s really not okay. My Mesmer wasn’t my main character, but when HoT was first announced I created one and poured 835 hours into her in less than a year. If you compare the former full well art to its current minimized animations, it is just sad. In addition, I have one of every profession available in my roster and what A-Net did to the Elementalist & Engineer’s effects are pretty depressing too. Then we have the issue of effects being totally invisible at times even when I am soloing.

GW2 doesn’t have a monthly subscription fee, but my wife and I spend $40 a month on Black Lion Gems. So, after having spent so much time & money in GW2, one can see why I am so invested. I have equated the GW2 special effects graphics nerf to totally removing color from a comic book. How many of you would still play GW2 if it was only offered in bland Black & White?

It would be very nice to get some reassurance from an A-Net employee that this is only temporary and the special effects will be restored to their former glory.

Why did you nerf Eruption and Churning earth?

Eruption has never bothered anyone and not it looks like a small pile of rocks you can barely see it.

Churning Earth is on such a long cooldown and it has to feel powerful. Now the particles have been reduced by something like 50%, they don’t even fill half the red circle.

Fireball looks like “Fire tennis ball”

Why would you do this and not fix tempest useless warhorn and elite skills?

I never post on forums, but I felt compelled to voice my disappointment with this change. When you nerf visual effects that players have been used to and enjoying for 3 years, you should really include an option to keep the original. This reminds me so much of back a few years ago when Everquest 2 destroyed all the amazing animations they had in for god awful wow style weak ones, people left in droves. Believe it or not there are q lot I people who play this game for the fantasy and changes like this make your character feel way less powerful and uninteresting. Amazing effects an animations are one of this games strongest draws, and you just hurt that.

Change it back, or give an option.

Yeah, I’m a bit disappointed too. I think visibility is an important thing, but making it an option seems like a lot more of an elegant way too fix it. For me personally at least the animations help me read the game, don’t obstruct it.

Xillllix.3485:

Why would you do this and not fix tempest useless warhorn and elite skills?

They already got peoples’ money for the expansion, so they go back to not caring or doing anything until they have something else to sell people, then they feign involvement again and people eat it up.

Daralii.8940:

Xillllix.3485:

Why would you do this and not fix tempest useless warhorn and elite skills?

They already got peoples’ money for the expansion, so they go back to not caring or doing anything until they have something else to sell people, then they feign involvement again and people eat it up.

This. Notice the massive lack of red posts compared to the last six months or so.

Anyhow, on topic, I’ve decided to not play my Ele until this issue is fixed or the heat death of the universe begins – not sure which will happen first.

A simple fix for these animation nerfs would simply be to add an option within the graphics settings for the user to change instead of making it a mandatory nerf for everyone. If it doesn’t bother some people as it does others, so be it. Let them keep their settings high on the animations and vice versa.

Just let us have that slider that everyone is asking for, it will fix raids, spectator mode and every single case you think a small pebble will be better than the kitten fireball.

Duke Nukem.6783:

esports? the gw2 competative combat is literally the worst fighting in an mmo i have ever seen
esports in gw2? give up anet

Well…

eSports was lined up big time before launch. But left before the first week of the live game was wrapped up.

GW1 had a very solid PvP scene, and was considered a great option at the time – so people naturally expected GW2 to improve upon that.

And I can see that Arena Net might still be wondering why they lost the magic on this one… and still be thinking they can recapture their glory days…

But outside of updated graphics, nonhuman characters, and the ability to jump… there’s very little in GW2 that is better than GW1…

Its like they canned the entire team that made a great game a decade ago, and hired who knows who to develop the sequel… I like GW2, but it just doesn’t have that special something GW1 did. Sadly GW1 now looks and feels too dated to go back…

ANet please give us option sliders to reduce/turn-off other players skill visual effects, except their Combo Fields, (don’t even want to see their Combo Finisher effects).

Carighan.6758:

Honestly these could be ok

eww! no, those are no where near ok for the love of sweet baby jesus! those wells used to be works of art. like majestic creatures! now they are more like half finished paintings after an artist got drunk and threw up all over them.

Thread falling into the second page!? I don’t think so!

Sorry Anet, you’re not getting rid of this by ignoring it this time.

The forced change is kinda sad.
I like the animations.
I wish there was another way.
Like some options or so.

I guess I don’t understand.
What did this change accomplish?
I don’t notice any difference during a boss fight.

The master of elemental arts channels the fire element around his hands and releases all the arcane energy in the form of… a tennis ball.

GG!

whenever I use autoattack I expect a mob to wield a racket and return it to me

Daralii.8940:

Jax.4903:

Amethyst Lure.5624:

It’s a bit puzzling why it isn’t a gfx setting, particularly since you can make different settings for raid etc.

The bad thing is Raids are such a small percentage of GW2 and many players will never participate in them; yet, everyone got a major graphics nerf across the board. Makes no sense. The special effects went from PS4 to PS2 quality. I really hope A-Net acknowledges this since many of us are upset over this issue.

The nerf was very likely targeted at SPvP, not raids. Readability is an issue when spectating, and they’d rather scramble to get a return on investment on all the money they’ve thrown into the esports toilet than do it properly or preserve the game’s art.

This makes a lot of sense, but to castrate our detailed special effects art just to accommodate spectators & tournaments is very wrong. The graphics card I bought for GW2 is now pointless.

As everyone said, special effects options will solve this; however, the lack of a response by A-Net doesn’t bode well for us. If this isn’t addressed, I will most likely move on. This issue is that important to me.

Excelvior.8520:

The master of elemental arts channels the fire element around his hands and releases all the arcane energy in the form of… a tennis ball.

GG!

whenever I use autoattack I expect a mob to wield a racket and return it to me

I gave you a +1, and my heart.

They really need to add an option to the visual options menu that allows you to swap between ‘full’, ‘muted’, ‘adaptive’, and ‘personal.’ meaning skills appear as amazing as they are now (or were in the case of Chrono wells, fireball, and Dragon’s Maw), muted reducing the number of effects or size of the effects of any skills devs find flashy, adaptive swapping between the two based on the number of players currently in the area, and personal muting other players’ effects while leaving yours full.

Other than that, remove the weird light circles that happen whenever anything gets hit by anything and shrink the on hit particle effects of some skills on larger bosses where they sometimes get inflated to a ridiculous point.

My wife (who plays more than myself) just brought up a very good point to add here: the visual nerfs to wells and combo fields makes gameplay WORSE. It is now substantially more difficult to identify a well from another well, and even more so for combo fields. ‘Is that a water field? My party is low on health, but my blast has a 50 second cooldown, should I use it?’ Considering that question alone can cost over a second for most players, and an equal amount of time to properly identify it. 1-2 seconds is long enough that a lot of fields would be gone before the blast lands.

Therefore, in 5-15 player groups, the visual nerfs have objectively made gameplay worse. The current doctrine of reducing visuals is just bad, and clearly very short-sighted.

This really shows how much importance pve players have anymore. This thread has existed for 5 days, and has 189 replies and more then 1000 views a day. During that time there have been 25 anet posts on pvp topics. There are 0 anet replies to this post. Priorities noted. Seriously, was there a board meeting and a memo passed around the office that said ’Don’t talk to these people, just ignore them so they go away. ’

Taigen Raine.8752:

This really shows how much importance pve players have anymore. This thread has existed for 5 days, and has 189 replies and more then 1000 views a day. During that time there have been 25 anet posts on pvp topics. There are 0 anet replies to this post. Priorities noted. Seriously, was there a board meeting and a memo passed around the office that said ’Don’t talk to these people, just ignore them so they go away. ’

Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the case.

An attempt is made to improve gameplay smoothness, and you guys come to complain? You would rather suffer through excruciating skill lag and choppy visuals in zergs?

Stand The Wall.6987:

An attempt is made to improve gameplay smoothness, and you guys come to complain? You would rather suffer through excruciating skill lag and choppy visuals in zergs?

Oh yes, I’m suddenly going to have VAST improvements to my frames-per-second and graphics level now that fireball has been reduced to chucking a lit charcoal briquette at an enemy.

Siobhan.5273:

Excelvior.8520:

The master of elemental arts channels the fire element around his hands and releases all the arcane energy in the form of… a tennis ball.

GG!

whenever I use autoattack I expect a mob to wield a racket and return it to me

I gave you a +1, and my heart.

awwwwww thank you so much <3 :P

Stand The Wall.6987:

An attempt is made to improve gameplay smoothness, and you guys come to complain? You would rather suffer through excruciating skill lag and choppy visuals in zergs?

if by ‘choppy visuals’, you mean overlapping effects? then… thats still a thing :| i dont follow your point at all. you dont need a zerg to experience that.

i really dont get what you are talking about with the FPS or skill lag or whatever you are saying either. ive only experience skill lag once due to ArenaNet having issues on their end with the servers. it was a few weeks ago when HoT was released. effects have no impact on skill lag at all unless, for some reason, you are running a 32-bit OS and even then i would say it would be very unlikely for skill lag to be caused by the effects of abilities. if you are using a 32-bit OS than i recommend you get out of the stone age! (no but seriously, upgrade if you have a 32-bit OS. c: )

zergs are still a mess and will always be a mess when it comes to visual effects. actually, as stated many times before by numerous people in this thread(myself included), anything above 5 players will still be a visual mess. that can’t be fixed unless ArenaNet decides to completely remove the effects all together.

the point is, it isnt really a bother to myself and many others in this thread. we loved the look of the effects in this game. what is the problem with giving us an option to revert these ridiculous changes? have these “reduced visual noise”changes on by default if you wish but at the very least give us a graphics option to revert the ability effects to their original state.

what ArenaNet did was destroy the look and feel of many great abilities for no reason other than sPvP spectators. they didnt do it so that you, me or anyone else that plays this game could have a “smooth gameplay experience”.

Stand The Wall.6987:

An attempt is made to improve gameplay smoothness, and you guys come to complain? You would rather suffer through excruciating skill lag and choppy visuals in zergs?

But changing the projectile doesn’t do anything but make it harder to see there’s an ele attacking you. The obfuscating part is the impact particle, which is completely unchanged.

Stand The Wall.6987:

An attempt is made to improve gameplay smoothness, and you guys come to complain? You would rather suffer through excruciating skill lag and choppy visuals in zergs?

If you’re talking about hardware performance, just because some people run the game on toasters doesn’t mean the people who actually upgraded their pc to play the game should suddenly get, as the saying goes, their carpets pulled from under them.

As stated many times before in this thread (which I certainly hope you read before you commented on it) what we all agree is best is an OPTION to get the effects we had before or to get the “improved” (read depressing) effects we have now.

I would not mind Anet reming all those flashy graphics and make more detailed and smaller (less flashy) effects.

sometimes all ic is a big white light spam on my screen, impossible to telegraph skills even when it is 5 vs 5 spamming all at the same spot.

atlavis.6028:

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?

This was what I was thinking actually. Make an option in the graphics option tab that either has a bullet to click or slider bar that allows for 3 options: OFF>>>MIN>>>MAX

I think this would be the best option for it, dont know how easy or hard that would be for them to do, but It would be the best option IMHO.

JaddynnStarr.5201:

Make an option in the graphics option tab that either has a bullet to click or slider bar that allows for 3 options: OFF>>>MIN>>>MAX.

That is exactly what will work & what everyone has been asking for, but the silence is deafening.

I view the powers as an extension of my character’s appearance & persona. Can you imagine how players would react if A-Net suddenly changed the appearance of races without rhyme or reason? Well, something similar has happened and apparently if we don’t like it, too bad.

This is a god awful change. Arena Net, get your s@#t together. Nearly every change you have made to your game recently has been absolutely terrible. One wonders if the teams over at Arena Net have any common sense. Patch after patch it becomes increasingly obvious that you people have lost your screws.

I mean engie got visually nerfed so bad ( RIP mortar) it almost killed my fun. Revert that kitten already! The chrono, the ele… jesus, wtf anet?! The coolest ffects are the reason i play this game for so long and my fav ones across the classes are getting so pitiful i’d rather play eso (that’s how depressed i am)

And yet, visual clutter is still there and always will. Make it a LOD option or restricted to pvp, SOMETHING that’s not this 90’s wet fart FX

I can’t help but notice that my polite and cordial responses by myself and others have resulted in no response of admission or recognition to this issue.

I desperately wish to remain polite and cordial, but I also can’t help but notice that these changes occurred in very close proximity to your current PvP tournament. Talk about being thrown under a bus. I don’t wish for my enjoyment of the game (which has drastically suffered as a result of my Tempest, Chrono, and DH being “visually nerfed” as they call it) to be dictated by the whims of the PvP crowd. Neither do I think they should bow to mine, so I think a slider is the best solution.

BTW, ANET. If you wish to have me invest my time, energy, and money in your game…particularly the eSports angle…you may wish to consider giving me something worth watching. When you take away the spectacle, what exactly is there to spectate? I certainly don’t consider the PvP tournament worth watching, and I don’t believe that your company deserves the $30 I was going to drop across the 3 aforementioned characters.

Many will argue that I may be slightly upset about having my power fantasy taken away, but I would also argue that power fantasy is sort of implied in your desire to engage in these games. People play characters to experience something that they wish they could experience/do in reality…if I could throw fire from my hands in real life without permanent damage or large expense I would probably be doing that right now. But I can’t, the best I can do is invest a bit of my time in a well developed and well designed game. Once you take that away from me, what is supposed to motivate me to play? Rewards? Couldn’t care less. eSports? Ditto. I don’t chase your carrot.

If you want to go PvP and eSports, go ahead, but I won’t be coming with you. I’ll gladly take all the good memories I have had from your game and move on. Again, not a threat, just the way things are. Remember, I love you ANET, but I don’t feel the love back.

-Darksabre