Guild Wars 2

Swift.1930:

Siobhan.5273:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nKnkySDrvU

This was the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns – E3 2015 trailer. Check out the lovely fireball being cast 2:07 minutes in..

Ah, the marketing. Funny how it picked up sales with the fireball, eh? People didn’t look at that and say “yeah, no way I’m going to play a game with that kind of visual mess”. They paid $50+. Where’d the fireball we paid for go? =(

I posted on this quite a few pages back. I came back to GW2 after a time away because of the expansion and the stuff I’d read and seen about it. I literally bought the expansion the weekend of the last open beta, so I had time to experience things for myself and be sure I wanted to come back. Same with my husband. My son wasn’t quite that prepared to jump in, so he waited a week or so after release, and then got the expansion (he’d started us, he’d played since head start, and left when we did after we defeated Triple Trouble and it’s myriad bugs). It feels bait and switch’ish with this “visual nerf”. Heck, the graphics is part of the lure of the game.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

It’s great and all that the devs prefer to post on reddit but I prefer to hear from them on here. How about a little quid pro quo, anet? If you communicate here at least as much as you do on reddit, I will read reddit at least as much as I read this forum.

As one of my Sylvari would say, “I like that”.

Idea: Give the aura the visual effect of the legendary weapons’ character outlines. It’s noticeable and maybe less taxing the original auras.

Putting this back on the front page so that people will use this instead of making their own threads.
Could we please at least get an official response here on this forum concerning what Anet’s plans are for graphic optimization and a tentative timeline? And will any of the really dreadful, functionality-impacting visual nerfs be rolled back when they complete their optimization.(Or when the esports thing is over)

I just want to thank Anet. With my refund of HoT I purchased the Full game of ESO at half the price, and with the rest I made another pledge on SC.
You see Anet I’m spending my money on games I feel deserve my patronage. Using Bait and switch never pays off in the end; Lets include the shallow content, bug infested meta’s, and grind ridden mess that is HoT. All at the premium price of a FULL game.

Anet you’ve insulted this ex-customer for the last time.

still awaiting an official response…. are you going to shut this one out like you did when we raged at you you for removing karma boosters from enchanted powder & most places of the game without warning?

I’ve been wanting an option to turn off all other players’ visual and particle effects forever. The more people have legendaries, the more of a clusterkitten huge fights become. I’ve fought the Statue of Dwayna so many times, I know the animations. But half the time I cannot even see the towering thing or what it is doing because it’s drowned in flashy lightning, overscaled effects (I still don’t know why particle effects actually scale with the mob model size – champion sharks say hello too), a million minion name tags (Why can’t I turn those off? Technically they are NPCs but surely as player allies they can be separated) and legendary effects that obscure half the screen.

In my ideal world there’s a proper and a light version for each particle effect and you get options – display everything fully, display only my character’s and enemy NPCs effects, display only my characters, only enemies, display everything but mine light, etc.

But that would require rework of most effects and actually giving the player options.

I also dislike the new fireball. It’s so small and measly. And toning it down is trying to fix a much larger symptom.

Sourde Noire.5286:

I also dislike the new fireball. It’s so small and measly. And toning it down is trying to fix a much larger symptom.

It fixed nothing! While the projectile is tiny, the impact particles still scale with the boss.

Wow. A month of threads and not one 1 red tag. Very disappointing from ANET.

People are still asking for animations to come back after they got removed a year ago!

So don’t think this will go away!

Still no response from Anet?

Avador.8934:

Still no response from Anet?

They did respond on Reddit. They said they are going forward with it because they’ve had comments of people not seeing anything, but they also understand it limits combat visibility.

Basically it makes no sense, they want to make combat easier to understand and they make invisible auras.

I can survive some of these visual changes. I’m not the happiest about they way they went about it, but I’ll make do.

What bites my kitten , is that since they implemented some of this, if I run with the ‘Effect LOD’ setting turned on, I can’t kittening see the stupid DH Hunter’s Ward (I think that’s the one that creates that chained arrow ring thing around you). So I end up just stuck in place and can’t see wtf is holding me there. Uncheck it and whala…I can see it. Super annoying.

Xillllix.3485:

Avador.8934:

Still no response from Anet?

They did respond on Reddit. They said they are going forward with it because they’ve had comments of people not seeing anything, but they also understand it limits combat visibility.

Basically it makes no sense, they want to make combat easier to understand and they make invisible auras.

Pretty much this. If they would have just stopped about halfway it woulda been perfect. They took some changes too far though. No one should have to look silly using a skill i.e. ele fireball, aura, and chaos armor.

Altair.2905:

Xillllix.3485:

Avador.8934:

Still no response from Anet?

They did respond on Reddit. They said they are going forward with it because they’ve had comments of people not seeing anything, but they also understand it limits combat visibility.

Basically it makes no sense, they want to make combat easier to understand and they make invisible auras.

Pretty much this. If they would have just stopped about halfway it woulda been perfect. They took some changes too far though. No one should have to look silly using a skill i.e. ele fireball, aura, and chaos armor.

Can you link the reddit post then?

And what happens when they make the slider that Colin Promised, will you be able slide the effects back up to pre nerf if you want? Also they said that anything on Reddit is not official so they need to post here still!

John.8507:

Altair.2905:

Xillllix.3485:

Avador.8934:

Still no response from Anet?

They did respond on Reddit. They said they are going forward with it because they’ve had comments of people not seeing anything, but they also understand it limits combat visibility.

Basically it makes no sense, they want to make combat easier to understand and they make invisible auras.

Pretty much this. If they would have just stopped about halfway it woulda been perfect. They took some changes too far though. No one should have to look silly using a skill i.e. ele fireball, aura, and chaos armor.

Can you link the reddit post then?

Reddit post by Colin

Can someone in the GW2 community PLEASE make a Mod for GW2 to restore the visual effects? ^-^ This is a PC game after all, I don’t see why we can’t mod it’s visual effects for our liking. I don’t know how to create mods but I hope someone here does! Please? Anyone?

I would Worship YOU if you can!!!

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Can someone in the GW2 community PLEASE make a Mod for GW2 to restore the visual effects? ^-^ This is a PC game after all, I don’t see why we can’t mod it’s visual effects for our liking. I don’t know how to create mods but I hope someone here does! Please? Anyone?

I would Worship YOU if you can!!!

Mods are not allowed in GW2.

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Can someone in the GW2 community PLEASE make a Mod for GW2 to restore the visual effects? ^-^ This is a PC game after all, I don’t see why we can’t mod it’s visual effects for our liking. I don’t know how to create mods but I hope someone here does! Please? Anyone?

I would Worship YOU if you can!!!

Worth noting that how easy to mod a game is varies from game to game. Skyrim for example is as simple as dragging and dropping the files. Mass Effect 3 however REQUIRES a special tool for something as simple as texture modding, and if you mod DLC textures you need yet another that stops Origin from flagging them as invalid.

Siobhan.5273:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Can someone in the GW2 community PLEASE make a Mod for GW2 to restore the visual effects? ^-^ This is a PC game after all, I don’t see why we can’t mod it’s visual effects for our liking. I don’t know how to create mods but I hope someone here does! Please? Anyone?

I would Worship YOU if you can!!!

Mods are not allowed in GW2.

Nor are they in FF14, but a lot of people don’t give a flying kitten. I’m in that camp.

Celestina.2894:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Can someone in the GW2 community PLEASE make a Mod for GW2 to restore the visual effects? ^-^ This is a PC game after all, I don’t see why we can’t mod it’s visual effects for our liking. I don’t know how to create mods but I hope someone here does! Please? Anyone?

I would Worship YOU if you can!!!

Worth noting that how easy to mod a game is varies from game to game. Skyrim for example, may as well be designed with the sole purpose of being modded. Dragon Age Inquisition on the other hand is significantly harder.

Siobhan.5273:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Can someone in the GW2 community PLEASE make a Mod for GW2 to restore the visual effects? ^-^ This is a PC game after all, I don’t see why we can’t mod it’s visual effects for our liking. I don’t know how to create mods but I hope someone here does! Please? Anyone?

I would Worship YOU if you can!!!

Mods are not allowed in GW2.

Nor are they in FF14, but a lot of people don’t give a flying kitten. I’m in that camp.

I’ve never played any of the FF of any kind,, so I wouldn’t know. If you folks wanna mod, I frankly could care less, it’s not my game account, or my game. Just stating the rules on it is all.

Siobhan.5273:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Can someone in the GW2 community PLEASE make a Mod for GW2 to restore the visual effects? ^-^ This is a PC game after all, I don’t see why we can’t mod it’s visual effects for our liking. I don’t know how to create mods but I hope someone here does! Please? Anyone?

I would Worship YOU if you can!!!

Mods are not allowed in GW2.

Well either way I’d still use the mod if someone makes it.
I want the original effects back so bad I wouldn’t care as long as it’s not detectable and doesn’t intefere with other players.

Either we get a mod to restore the visual effects or ArenaNet brings it back with a slider option to tone the effects down on graphics options for those who want to tone it down.

Being forced into the Visual nerf makes me less-likely to enjoy the game as a whole.
=( I want an option to bring it back and I’ll take whatever option that comes first to enhance my enjoyment of the game.

Maybe they’re silent because they’re busy restoring the visual effects and building a slider instead. ~hopeful but doubtful~

Willowfalls.9814:

Maybe they’re silent because they’re busy restoring the visual effects and building a slider instead. ~hopeful but doubtful~

I’m going to hope that’s the case…
But still not an excuse to not communicate with us about it. =(

Willowfalls.9814:

Maybe they’re silent because they’re busy restoring the visual effects and building a slider instead. ~hopeful but doubtful~

Nah, apparently, it was Cupcake Day at ANet according to this linked Reddit post.

/sigh

This reminds of when UO employees stopped using the UO forums in favor of Stratics. Everything was posted to Stratics. If you wanted any info, that’s where you found the staff, posting on Stratics. Next thing we knew, it was being announced that the “official” UO forums were being shut down, and Stratics was the new “official” forums.

Disappointing. Communication is important and we should be getting it here.

Revert the visual nerfs until a slider option is available. COME ON, Anet!

Get over here!!! Back to the top you go.

Hah! nah tiny fireballs suits elementalists!

I think all animations with large non-transparent spirtes should get sizes reduced. COUGH LEGENDARY GSs, MOST ENGI ATTACKS AND SOME NECRO COUGH….
Appologies, had something in my throat.

You might like launching bigger ones, but standing in melee range is hell with giant attack animations comming from all sides. Standing within 300 range of target it’s impossible to see anything during larger events.

Jitsuryoku.9038:

Hah! nah tiny fireballs suits elementalists!

I think all animations with large non-transparent spirtes should get sizes reduced. COUGH LEGENDARY GSs, MOST ENGI ATTACKS AND SOME NECRO COUGH….
Appologies, had something in my throat.

You might like launching bigger ones, but standing in melee range is hell with giant attack animations comming from all sides. Standing within 300 range of target it’s impossible to see anything during larger events.

sigh
Again, nothing has really been improved for your types. The particle animation for the projectile was shrunk, but the IMPACT particles were NOT. That was the problem, not the fireball itself, this change didn’t do a kitten thing to help you.

Edit: Also, what did the Auras do to you? How did they get in your way? Hmmm?

Also Auras are much harder for everyone to see now. ^^

You thought I’d let this fall from the front page? Nuh huh.

Siobhan.5273:

John.8507:

Altair.2905:

Xillllix.3485:

Avador.8934:

Still no response from Anet?

They did respond on Reddit. They said they are going forward with it because they’ve had comments of people not seeing anything, but they also understand it limits combat visibility.

Basically it makes no sense, they want to make combat easier to understand and they make invisible auras.

Pretty much this. If they would have just stopped about halfway it woulda been perfect. They took some changes too far though. No one should have to look silly using a skill i.e. ele fireball, aura, and chaos armor.

Can you link the reddit post then?

Reddit post by Colin

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

ArenaColin 301 points 8 days ago

Thanks folks, I passed this discussion along to the folks driving the project on combat visibility.

Combat visibility in general isn’t driven by any sort of “esports” stuff though I realize that’s the easy out that’s cool thing to blame things on this week. Despite some of the insane assumptions I’ve seen lately, the PvP pro league is pretty much entirely a marketing team thing and has almost no impact on the dev team. Though we all think it’s really cool, and seriously some of those games monday were awesome!

From a marketing standpoint, it (and the ESL weekly cups and WTS tournaments before it) has been extremely successful so far, among the most successful projects our marketing team has ever launched to grow our title in the history of the Guild Wars franchise in return for the cost. If you don’t like it more power to you, don’t watch, but it’s absolutely helping our marketing folks make Gw2 a bigger game which I’d hope we’re all excited about. If you want to see the game fail I’m not sure what you’re doing here, but rooting against programs like pro league is basically rooting against Gw2 growing. When folks come here and rip on stuff like PvP, you’re basically hurting the games ability to grow – and personally I would say shame on you, if you truly love the game, be constructive and give awesome feedback and suggestions: but don’t knock it just cause it’s not PvE. And let’s be honest, it beats spending marketing funds on taxi confession ads or people spray painting wall cinematics if you ask me.

The reality about FX visibility is it’s consistent feedback we’ve had on every part of Gw2 for years that people can’t always see what’s going on in combat; our design, gameplay programming and FX team are putting a focus on resolving this issue together. This is most important in WvW and open world PvE where it’s the most problematic and where we need to solve this the most, though certainly impacts other parts of the game from Raids to Fractals to PvP.

Seeing what’s going on in combat isn’t a PvP problem – it’s a Gw2 problem, and it’s why our teams are trying to address it. I will say last time I saw the backlog of combat visibility cleanup work, the vast majority of stuff was along the lines of what you’re all suggesting below. More programming solutions at the systemic level and going after a lot of the side-FX like noise generated by other players rather than directly impacting your own FX 100% of the time. That’s the type of stuff you should be seeing in the future as this project ramps up, and looking at more options so you can opt into more noise if you want seems pretty logical. Along with that I imagine they will have opportunities to revisit some of the concerns raised here in relation to needing to see stuff that is important and how some FX have now become unreadable that should be, it’s (mostly) great constructive and totally fair feedback imho.

Colin does say you can opt in to more noise, but is that more particle effects or will they restore the visuals to pre nerf level?

bump

1111111111111111

John.8507:

Siobhan.5273:

John.8507:

Altair.2905:

Xillllix.3485:

Avador.8934:

Still no response from Anet?

They did respond on Reddit. They said they are going forward with it because they’ve had comments of people not seeing anything, but they also understand it limits combat visibility.

Basically it makes no sense, they want to make combat easier to understand and they make invisible auras.

Pretty much this. If they would have just stopped about halfway it woulda been perfect. They took some changes too far though. No one should have to look silly using a skill i.e. ele fireball, aura, and chaos armor.

Can you link the reddit post then?

Reddit post by Colin

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

ArenaColin 301 points 8 days ago

Thanks folks, I passed this discussion along to the folks driving the project on combat visibility.

Combat visibility in general isn’t driven by any sort of “esports” stuff though I realize that’s the easy out that’s cool thing to blame things on this week. Despite some of the insane assumptions I’ve seen lately, the PvP pro league is pretty much entirely a marketing team thing and has almost no impact on the dev team. Though we all think it’s really cool, and seriously some of those games monday were awesome!

From a marketing standpoint, it (and the ESL weekly cups and WTS tournaments before it) has been extremely successful so far, among the most successful projects our marketing team has ever launched to grow our title in the history of the Guild Wars franchise in return for the cost. If you don’t like it more power to you, don’t watch, but it’s absolutely helping our marketing folks make Gw2 a bigger game which I’d hope we’re all excited about. If you want to see the game fail I’m not sure what you’re doing here, but rooting against programs like pro league is basically rooting against Gw2 growing. When folks come here and rip on stuff like PvP, you’re basically hurting the games ability to grow – and personally I would say shame on you, if you truly love the game, be constructive and give awesome feedback and suggestions: but don’t knock it just cause it’s not PvE. And let’s be honest, it beats spending marketing funds on taxi confession ads or people spray painting wall cinematics if you ask me.

The reality about FX visibility is it’s consistent feedback we’ve had on every part of Gw2 for years that people can’t always see what’s going on in combat; our design, gameplay programming and FX team are putting a focus on resolving this issue together. This is most important in WvW and open world PvE where it’s the most problematic and where we need to solve this the most, though certainly impacts other parts of the game from Raids to Fractals to PvP.

Seeing what’s going on in combat isn’t a PvP problem – it’s a Gw2 problem, and it’s why our teams are trying to address it. I will say last time I saw the backlog of combat visibility cleanup work, the vast majority of stuff was along the lines of what you’re all suggesting below. More programming solutions at the systemic level and going after a lot of the side-FX like noise generated by other players rather than directly impacting your own FX 100% of the time. That’s the type of stuff you should be seeing in the future as this project ramps up, and looking at more options so you can opt into more noise if you want seems pretty logical. Along with that I imagine they will have opportunities to revisit some of the concerns raised here in relation to needing to see stuff that is important and how some FX have now become unreadable that should be, it’s (mostly) great constructive and totally fair feedback imho.

Colin does say you can opt in to more noise, but is that more particle effects or will they restore the visuals to pre nerf level?

We’re assuming pre-nerf, but we’ll have to wait and see. I’m with the group of folks that wonders why particle effects weren’t nerfed when personally, I find that that stuff more distracting than anything else (and it’s not really that distracting at all) if you know what you’re looking at/for).

Then again, I’m not understanding why the nerfs at all, but now we’re all seeing a blithering booty-ton of those darn tournament tags everywhere.

Siobhan.5273:

but now we’re all seeing a blithering booty-ton of those darn tournament tags everywhere.

Somehow funny that PvP is the only place where you can’t see them.

Some of the changes I can agree with, but shields are silly. – How is this meant to be an earth shield. And the fireball is a fire pebble now.

I PMed Colin in Reddit and he never got back to me. I’m either being ignored or his busy. I don’t know which one but I’m worried about the future of the game more than ever now…

I’m playing Blades and Soul Beta this weekend and I love it.
The visual effects are way more impressive than GW2’s since the visual nerf bat.
The fact that I’m enjoying it better than GW2 is a bad sign.

Also Blades & Soul is E-sport in Asia…

I was fighting one of the new HoT event bosses today for the first time. I have no idea what it looks like, I know it was bigish and it may have had wings but possibly not that is all I could tell from nearly 10 minutes fighting it and really trying to get a look at it.

That is just broken, how can visual effects be so terrible that you can’t even see what you are fighting for 10 minutes? Please let us turn all this crap off and see the game!

Edit: It was Champion Axemaster Gwyllion, no wings! The (out of combat) picture on wiki showed me what the game could not.

How about a way to turn off everyone else’s effects and only display your own and your party members? Problem solved and no visual nerfs needed…

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Each nerf brings us closer to the ultimate optimisation: a black screen where we use our imagination! Imagine the fps on that!!

I was joking when I said the above… but this weekend, several times a day, the screen has gone black though the mouse is still visible and the sound keeps playing, as if the game is still going on. Be afraid.

VaderCookie.8137:

Siobhan.5273:

but now we’re all seeing a blithering booty-ton of those darn tournament tags everywhere.

Somehow funny that PvP is the only place where you can’t see them.

Really? That is just plain silly.

If this falls off of the front page people will make new threads instead of using this one.

I know this is still an ongoing project and these things might already be being worked on, but here are my suggestions.

Effects LOD option is currently a bit too aggressive, making nearly every skill effects invisible. Not being able to see timewarp in a 5-man fractal is absurd.

• Set priorities to each effects, so important effects are less likely to be culled. Hide melee weapon trails and spammable explosions, do not hide feedback bubbles.
• Maybe make it a slider or a drop down menu, rather than a checkbox?

Auras are too hard to see now. They could all use more visibility, but important ones like magnetic aura should especially be more visible.

I’m glad this is being worked on, open world bosses are a lot easier to see now and I like that, but I think some missteps were made. Hopefully we can see improvements soon.

The Greyhawk.9107:

Sourde Noire.5286:

I also dislike the new fireball. It’s so small and measly. And toning it down is trying to fix a much larger symptom.

It fixed nothing! While the projectile is tiny, the impact particles still scale with the boss.

Well, in that case the nerf was even more pointless. And I agree that auras are a joke now. Before, you could immediately tell which aura was which and I fail to see how that was a clutter issue, moreso compared to the scaling particle effects and just the effects in general in Particle Wars.

Again, add options to tone down or disable any particle effect that isn’t my own or the NPCs’, would immediately fix most if not all visibility problems this game has.

Countess Anise seems to be more powerful than we expected. She can even bend time and patches in order to get the old chaos armor effect. (Screen taken last sunday)

I like the new aura animations. Much less obtrusive and classy looking.

Need a fix on the aura’s and fireball’s!

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I like the new aura animations. Much less obtrusive and classy looking.

There’s something wrong with you. How are almost invisible eggs “classy”? Since when were auras ever intrusive?

For real!: the fireball needs to return to be a fireball, right now its a fire-pebble.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I like the new aura animations. Much less obtrusive and classy looking.

Dude. The polls have closed. They’ve already picked the White Knight of 2015. But I suppose an early start on next year’s awards can’t hurt.

Also, the lightning on my air overload is still sparse even when I’m within range of a target. Sometimes you can’t even see it when it’s apparently firing.

The Greyhawk.9107:

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I like the new aura animations. Much less obtrusive and classy looking.

There’s something wrong with you. How are almost invisible eggs “classy”? Since when were auras ever intrusive?

Since a already cluttered group of ppl fighting turned into a x-mass tree of orange orbs fighting. Try joining a fight at mid point in pvp. Even with auras nerfed it’s already a clusterkitten in terms of readability. And don’t even get me started on what happens when mesmers and minion master necros join the party..