Guild Wars 2

Mostly Harmless.7046:

So much time without a proper answer… I feel so discouraged…

Meh… this is nothing compared to the lack of responses for assorted wvw issues and the previous trait system.

Elden Arnaas.4870:

re: I think this game still has too much “visual noise”. In raid groups or large zergs on world bosses. – It most certainly does. Because what they’ve done so far does not really address the issue. It requires a proper fix. Which would include player adjustable settings, so that each player can adjust their graphics to suit their taste/needs.

I took a screenshot last night on my desktop system I need to post to this thread. I’m currently on my laptop, so I’ll do this later.. but, goodness.. we were fighting the Tarnished Traitor guy after a successful Octovine encounter. Lots of people, lots of AoE.

I’ll be back with that screenshot later.

Mostly Harmless.7046:

So much time without a proper answer… I feel so discouraged…

Colin himself said something few weeks ago. On Reddit…

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

I took a break from these forums for three or so weeks and on returning, I’m stunned that this thread is still going and there still hasn’t been any communication from anet. Then I think about that and I’m stunned that I’m stunned by that.

Welcome back. Still quiet on the home front.

Until change for auras ele proffession had easily to notice moves, now we have transparent auras, but ele gained some optical deceiving tools.

Until change for fireball ele proffession had plain patterns, now we have most tricky attack since combo churning earth + lighting flash.

I approve even until you came up with someting better. Even if first one is a little unfair and second one make people cry cuz of memory how fireball was looking before that change.

Siobhan.5273:

I took a screenshot last night on my desktop system I need to post to this thread. I’m currently on my laptop, so I’ll do this later.. but, goodness.. we were fighting the Tarnished Traitor guy after a successful Octovine encounter. Lots of people, lots of AoE.

I’ll be back with that screenshot later.

As promised. Screenshot attached. I’ve also attached a screenshot of my graphics settings, which I’ve recently turned down across the board because I’ve been having some odd screen freezing issues at big events since last week or so:

Arkanthor.2307:

Mostly Harmless.7046:

So much time without a proper answer… I feel so discouraged…

Colin himself said something few weeks ago. On Reddit…

Do you mean that disparaging you’re-for-esports-or-you’re-against-gw2 post he wrote or has he written something since?

HOLIDAYS OVER, CHOP CHOP

Siobhan.5273:

Siobhan.5273:

I took a screenshot last night on my desktop system I need to post to this thread. I’m currently on my laptop, so I’ll do this later.. but, goodness.. we were fighting the Tarnished Traitor guy after a successful Octovine encounter. Lots of people, lots of AoE.

I’ll be back with that screenshot later.

As promised. Screenshot attached. I’ve also attached a screenshot of my graphics settings, which I’ve recently turned down across the board because I’ve been having some odd screen freezing issues at big events since last week or so:

Same event done again last night, this time with the UI minimized so you can see stuff without all the names all over the screen.

And yet, I can’t get an option to turn off the ridiculous Disco Disc off my Herald….. <sigh>

I’d really like to know what their plans are going forward. And I know I’m not alone. How hard is it to put up a simple response?(Here instead of Reddit.)

re: Herald Disco Disc – Yeah, that thing is visually loud and distracting. And I haven’t memorized the hieroglyphs, I look at the skill bar to know what I have active. It gives a very clear and non-visually noisy indication of what you have active atm. So there’s really no need for the hieroglyphs, or the great big, bright disc of distraction. Yet we have that, and new, enhanced (cosmetic) visual effects for Legendary weapons. And two new shoulder items that give totally cosmetic visual auras. How do these fit into their plan for reducing visual noise? They seem to be going out of their way to add visual noise.

Elden Arnaas.4870:

I’d really like to know what their plans are going forward. And I know I’m not alone. How hard is it to put up a simple response?(Here instead of Reddit.)

You’re definitely not alone there. Even if they only put up a response on Reddit, I’m sure Just a Flesh Wound would link us a post to it here. (Hat tip to him) I haven’t seen one so I presume they haven’t even posted anything even on reddit.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Arkanthor.2307:

Mostly Harmless.7046:

So much time without a proper answer… I feel so discouraged…

Colin himself said something few weeks ago. On Reddit…

Do you mean that disparaging you’re-for-esports-or-you’re-against-gw2 post he wrote or has he written something since?

It’s been how long… and I’m still stunned by that response he posted (on Reddit, no less).

People who work at Anet: We the players actually like things to look cool in a video game like this. I get that some people want to see the boss in a big fight. Can’t you just give them a switch to kill the overload of graphics in those situations and let the rest of us see the awesome graphics that were once a part of this game? I’m not sure if you just don’t realize it or what, but the cool effects when doing spells and such as a HUGE part of what makes this game fun. The stuff you’ve done lately is just taking the fun away. And this is a game. It should be fun, or else what the heck are we doing here.

So I log into the forums tonight to a sea of red colored threads where folks were fortunate enough to get some sort of response (or a whole new topic started by an Anet employee even!) and see this thread, our visual nerf thread.. created after the mid November visual mayhem was set loose upon us.. sitting at 770 replies… 16 pages.. and… dust..

On the front page of the Guild Wars 2 Discussion Forum alone we’ve got:

1) Home instance hired labour with 4 Anet responses in it,
and it’s only been up 3 days and a few pages long with 59 posts.

2) We need balance patch ._.. Thread is 2 days old and has 79 replies, it has seen 2 posts from an Anet employee.

3) Nevermore. Not even 24 hours old at the time of my posting this. 1 Anet response and 19 replies.

There are a few more.. the drama filled Suck @ Love banning, blah, blah,blah. With my busted hand, I simply couldn’t keep digging up and formatting more.

However, we still get no response, no recognition that we’re here and asking for communication.. Okay. Message received. Perhaps your F2P accounts won’t notice a darn thing, Good luck with that. I’m done trying to support the game and being ignored while my graphics get gutted to boot.

Although I don’t really believe anything posted here will be read by any ANet staff, still, here’s my small contribution:

How can I make this content better?

Increase the Fireball’s size to the original size. Maybe even bigger.

How have you seen this particular problem solved in other games?

They have a client option to reduce visuals of (important!) other players.

How do you think this particular element or aspect of the game could be improved?

Increase the size(s) of the spell(s). Reduce the flashy on hit visuals because that’s what makes it impossible to see the target, not the projectile on it’s way to the target. Or maybe only play visual on hit effects for your own skills, or leave a client option for it.
Or reduce the on hit effect overall to something that don’t affect the monster, for example there’s no reason to make the monster flash whenever he’kitten by any skill, but play with effects around it.

See WoW, although it’s been ages since I haven’t played, I remember being able to see monsters clearly even on a 25m raid. You can still see on hit effects, but none (almost all) changed or made the monster “flash”.

Watch, at the 35 sec mark, how the mob doesn’t flash at all. Although players are firing pellets just like the new Fireball, that’s NOT why you can see the mob clearly. It’s because of the on hit effects.

Tell us why you answered that way

This is a 3D MMO RPG, graphics are a huge part of it and GW2’s graphics, from the technical standpoint, are simply stunning.

For me, Fireballs could be bigger, Meteor Showers could have a client only animation of my character yelling something of impact while showing a quick face flash animation and each meteor could also explode and unicorns fly out of it. I’d use it every time.

You see, there are players who are concerned with how good, nice and flashy graphics we see when we play. I used to enjoy watching my Elementalist throwing those amazing Fireballs on mobs. I’d even throw some Fireballs while running around simply because they looked awesome.

Now every time I see a Fireball, I cringe. I think “ugh, if I can, I won’t use it”
If effect cluttering is an issue, you should look for a fix without breaking/dampening other parts that are working well. If you play around a bit on bosses, you’ll notice most of the time you can’t see the monster is because of on hit effects, like when he’s flashing blue or white, not because of the projectiles flying it’s way. If you changed this to only display a reduced version for other player’s effects, or just reduce them overall, or change so they don’t affect the monster’s visuals, this wouldn’t be such a big issue and graphics would still be nice.

are they REALLY going to ignore this topic now that they’re everywhere???

I guess nothing hasn’t been restored yet…

Oh this is still here.

Thanks for posting those screenshots so people who still think any kind of visual nerf is actually making visibility better can see that it doesn’t change a thing when things get cluttered. Which they do. It only makes everything look worse when you are actually able to see things.

What the hell. They’re posting in every other thread… Anet, are you guys for real? This is just appalling…

What’s stopping some kind of transparency function to hide other people’s skills. That would be so much easier then redoing existing visuals on spells.

I have a feeling we’ll get some word about this next tuesday. Just feeling…

Avador.8934:

I have a feeling we’ll get some word about this next tuesday. Just feeling…

You’re getting me hyped…

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Avador.8934:

I have a feeling we’ll get some word about this next tuesday. Just feeling…

You’re getting me hyped…

I’m not going to hold my breath.

Mostly Harmless.7046:

What the hell. They’re posting in every other thread… Anet, are you guys for real? This is just appalling…

It truly is. I recently “recruited” my adult daughter to the game via F2P having some faith that this would be addressed properly, and not via Reddit (or via a ’ you’ll like eSports or you must not like GW2 post ‘), or at the least we would be. I had planned on setting her up with gem cards for bank and bag expansions/character customization/armor sets (you know, being pretty as us girls like to be) and the expansion. My wallet (and hers surely, she’s got other obligations young folks have these days) will stay closed as long as ANet stays silent on this issue.

NinjaWursti.9627:

Oh this is still here.

Thanks for posting those screenshots so people who still think any kind of visual nerf is actually making visibility better can see that it doesn’t change a thing when things get cluttered. Which they do. It only makes everything look worse when you are actually able to see things.

My pleasure.

You know, it may be that they’re silent because they don’t know how to proceed at this point. Because they’re still planning out how they want to effectively address this issue. If that’s the case, please just post something here(not Reddit) to that effect. How hard would it be to type up something like:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“We’re sorry that the measures we took to address the visual noise issue were pretty much ineffective and had a negative impact on enjoyment of the game for many of you. We’re carefully examining our options and looking for a way to move forward on this with minimal negative impact. And once again, we’re sorry for the negative impact this has had. It was not our intent to make players angry. We were only trying to improve the game, and we will address this issue when we’re sure we have a good solution.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And post it.(here, not on Reddit)

Elden Arnaas.4870:

You know, it may be that they’re silent because they don’t know how to proceed at this point. Because they’re still planning out how they want to effectively address this issue. If that’s the case, please just post something here(not Reddit) to that effect. How hard would it be to type up something like:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“We’re sorry that the measures we took to address the visual noise issue were pretty much ineffective and had a negative impact on enjoyment of the game for many of you. We’re carefully examining our options and looking for a way to move forward on this with minimal negative impact. And once again, we’re sorry for the negative impact this has had. It was not our intent to make players angry. We were only trying to improve the game, and we will address this issue when we’re sure we have a good solution.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And post it.(here, not on Reddit)

Well, I’ll give my opinion too: I think ANet should keep the forums as the primary communication location, why set up one up under their domains and then proceed to use something outsider website with higher likelyhood of containing less than 100% of their player base?

re: Elden Arnaas.4870-

Well, I think since Colin claims the sliders are something we “should be seeing in the future”, we should also have been hearing about it by now. We can see gliding in the ‘older lands’, and get balance change first looks, but for some reason, this is being sat on like it contains some super super industry secret?

I look at the bolded parts of what Colin wrote on Reddit, and see just how rude his post was, well, at least in my opinion.

“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.

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":

People were here, in this thread, and giving feedback, constructive, polite feedback before this Reddit post. We still have been met with resounding silence, and worse, while it seems ANet has has gone out if it’s way to be more “visible” here since the holidays ended last week, this thread has purposely been ignored. I watched it sit amid a bunch of red responses, untouched and that is just disheartening.

These changes did nothing but single out certain spell effects and ruin them for seemingly no reason, as the screenshots I’ve attached show. Speaking of, here is a fight with Mordy last night where it was so bad, players were actually obscured by spells:

Maybe if we gave them something positive to comment on, like is it just me, or does FPS at Frozen Maw/Svanir Shaman not drop like a stone these last few days? Has there been some stealth optimization there?

Elden Arnaas.4870:

Maybe if we gave them something positive to comment on, like is it just me, or does FPS at Frozen Maw/Svanir Shaman not drop like a stone these last few days? Has there been some stealth optimization there?

I’ve not really played there much, except once in many weeks this past week when I took my daughter and her pal there to get the WP and show them how the event works ( we showed them level appropriate boss events and explained how scaling works once she hit 40 and had a decent grasp of the game and her character). With my creepy screen skipping, I darn near hop in my seat if I get through an event without an issue, so I’m not sure. I’ll have to go have a look-see and check that out. I remember though, before HoT, this place was always a nightmare, I don’t think it really was that bad this past week, so you may in fact be right.

Elden Arnaas.4870:

Maybe if we gave them something positive to comment on, like is it just me, or does FPS at Frozen Maw/Svanir Shaman not drop like a stone these last few days? Has there been some stealth optimization there?

The thing to remember here is that this is a customer/supplier relationship with all that entails. We’re not dating anet. We are not responsible for wooing them into a conversation. They have a professional obligation to communicate with their customers, as any business does.

You made an excellent point a few posts back: maybe they don’t know how to enter this conversation at this point. You offered an example they could use. Let me offer something too: just say anything, anet. It doesn’t matter what at this point. Even if it’s insulting, ingratiating, patronising. Make a bad joke. Start with a corny line like “Hey, what’s a nice player like you doing in a forum like this?”
Just say something. When you’ve posted once, the next post will be much easier. And the next. You’re not required to make a perfect first post. That’s not possible. Whatever you say somebody’s going to be kittened. But many are going to be happier just because you’re talking. So say anything, and keep saying anything. As your first-date nerves die down, the conversation will get easier and more productive.

Elden Arnaas.4870:

Maybe if we gave them something positive to comment on, like is it just me, or does FPS at Frozen Maw/Svanir Shaman not drop like a stone these last few days? Has there been some stealth optimization there?

I went tonight to check out a few of the bosses. I dropped by The Claw of Jormag first since it’s the last day of Wintersday, and I figured alot of folks would be wanting to get their achievements done if they hadn’t already (I needed one more kill myself, so why not!), so hey, good test subject. Lots of folks and AoE’s. I took screenshots of my FPS during this.

Then, I hopped on over Frozen Maw and there was quite the group of people there as well. I took a screenshot of my FPS during this event, the beginning even, and I don’t think anything was done to improve it. I actually found it to be quite bad. Jormag was much more packed and I had a better FPS during that event. I took a screenshot of my FPS minutes after the Frozen Maw event was over, as well as a screenshot of the effects without all the names on the screen.

I’m all for giving credit where credit is due (I’ll even post a thanks to a GM when I feel it’s warranted), but I agree with what Zoltar MacRoth posted above this 100%.

Probably been said, but I feel like venting.

I can’t see any of the auras anymore with the faint eggshell. But I’m reasonable, I’ll take the bad with the good. At the very least I’m just so glad my visuals aren’t bogged down by people stacking infusion auras with bats/snow, bees, etc.

*eye roll*

Siobhan.5273:

re: Elden Arnaas.4870-

Well, I think since Colin claims the sliders are something we “should be seeing in the future”, we should also have been hearing about it by now. We can see gliding in the ‘older lands’, and get balance change first looks, but for some reason, this is being sat on like it contains some super super industry secret?

I look at the bolded parts of what Colin wrote on Reddit, and see just how rude his post was, well, at least in my opinion.

“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.

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":

People were here, in this thread, and giving feedback, constructive, polite feedback before this Reddit post. We still have been met with resounding silence, and worse, while it seems ANet has has gone out if it’s way to be more “visible” here since the holidays ended last week, this thread has purposely been ignored. I watched it sit amid a bunch of red responses, untouched and that is just disheartening.

These changes did nothing but single out certain spell effects and ruin them for seemingly no reason, as the screenshots I’ve attached show. Speaking of, here is a fight with Mordy last night where it was so bad, players were actually obscured by spells:

Wow.

I don’t go to reddit because I find it eye-bleedingly ugly and incredibly frustrating to use, so I haven’t seen that post before.

I am disappoint.

I was expecting big news today.

Nope, still in the dark.

No news on ‘visual noise’ with Colon’s announcement…

Lets think for a second guys— do you really think they don’t understand our plight? Of course they do. They always add tons of features to the game, even the pointless action camera(which is very enjoyable I must say). I’m sure the issue is more difficult to adjust as of right now with new living world coming, and future plans keeping them busy.

Ask yourself, why would they tone things down in a game where they pride themselves on their art design. PVP hit it off pretty hard and I am sure that this change, with the flood of new people, was necessary to make sure people could run the game. A change like this was much easier to implement than adjusting the particle density of every spell animation in the game in correlation to graphical settings, because lets face it— are they really only going to adjust graphical settings for elementalists? Of course not, but for right now this was the biggest problem that had to be put on hold. It is not just about the graphical issues with slowing down computers, but the visual gameplay portion that has clearly been affected. In larger fights it is very hard to dodge deathblow hits when you can’t see anything, and the most powerful computer in the world wouldn’t help you with that. Sure you could turn down the population density on screen, but is that really fun? To have everyone invisible? This just contradicts the argument that people should be able to adjust graphical settings—because that is what this change already did! We all want everything on screen at all times, including other players and what they are shooting as well. I’m sure there is a balance somewhere in all of this that will be added with new graphical settings. Most MMOs get huge graphical updates as they age, like everquest or WoW, so who says they are going to keep the graphics as they are forever? I’m sure there are much better ways in the making to render animations without the cost of the graphical beauty.

There are always bigger things in store when arenanet is quiet, and everyone should know that they won’t respond to things like this when they can’t give a clear answer with false promises. But yes I feel the pain of this change as well, with my main being an elementalist and hit the hardest. I just got into auramancer and lost all of the amazing effects. I don’t use staff so much anymore with the warhorn addition, but the peashooter is ridiculous. So I’m going to be patient and see what plans get announced.

re: We are not responsible for wooing them into a conversation.- Call it what you want, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. And I think I have.

I’m reasonably certain that this thread is on a “Forbidden Topic” list. I believe that Anet employees are allowed to read, but not allowed to comment on this topic. And in fact someone may be tasked with reading this thread and making note of the feedback. Because they could have closed this thread if they wanted to, but the thread is still open. It also seems that recently(my cloudy, vague version of recently) policy has changed, and Anet employees are no longer allowed to say that they aren’t allowed to comment on a given thing. They used to be able to say this, but now it seems like they’re not allowed to any more.

So at this point I’m sure there’s no way to “woo” or “goad” them into replying. No reply will come until management takes this topic off of the “Forbidden Topic” list. What we must do going forward, is keep this thread alive in a legitimate way.(not just bumping) We must continue to give useful, respectful feedback.
<edit>
TL;DR – Just because there’s no reply doesn’t mean they aren’t listening. Give them good(useful) feedback.

They do this, yet leave all the other lame animations and visual effects as they are and have been since day one.

It took them years to acknowledge the hobosack eyesore. I’m guessing this will take years to see a response as well.

Tskales.2804:

They do this, yet leave all the other lame animations and visual effects as they are and have been since day one.

It took them years to acknowledge the hobosack eyesore. I’m guessing this will take years to see a response as well.

Hobosack?

State of the Game Update —Q1 2016 by Colin Johanson on January 12, 2016

More Controls

We’ll be adding some new optional key bindings for action camera, snap ground targeting, and autotargeting so that players can use any of these features in either push-to-toggle or hold-to-toggle mode. Also, a new check box will be added to always show the names of objects you can interact with in the world, similar to the existing check boxes for player, NPC, and enemy names.

I see no mention of visual effect sliders.

Elden Arnaas.4870:

re: We are not responsible for wooing them into a conversation.- Call it what you want, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. And I think I have.

I’m reasonably certain that this thread is on a “Forbidden Topic” list. I believe that Anet employees are allowed to read, but not allowed to comment on this topic. And in fact someone may be tasked with reading this thread and making note of the feedback. Because they could have closed this thread if they wanted to, but the thread is still open. It also seems that recently(my cloudy, vague version of recently) policy has changed, and Anet employees are no longer allowed to say that they aren’t allowed to comment on a given thing. They used to be able to say this, but now it seems like they’re not allowed to any more.

So at this point I’m sure there’s no way to “woo” or “goad” them into replying. No reply will come until management takes this topic off of the “Forbidden Topic” list. What we must do going forward, is keep this thread alive in a legitimate way.(not just bumping) We must continue to give useful, respectful feedback.
<edit>
TL;DR – Just because there’s no reply doesn’t mean they aren’t listening. Give them good(useful) feedback.

No restriction on posting is what we’ve been told.

There have been over 800 posts in this thread, and it been a few months now. The feedback has been useful. People have been polite (for the most part, I think, certainly more-so than that Reddit post was).

I’m starting to get extremely annoyed by all of the visual effect nerfing.
Why can’t there be an option for people who actually like the skills and other effects looking nice?

Heck, if they could do it they could add an option to turn up/down others visual noise and a separate option for your own. Kinda like the character models.

It’s really noticeable with the Mesmers chaos storm/shield. it used to actually look like a storm on the area and now is just a plain white circle half the time. The shield just looks like a lil’ flimsy purple dome when it actually used to have the Mesmers aesthetic with the butterflies and shattered glass to it.

And what happened to the flower trails with Kudzu? They used to look like this and now the projectile is barely seen.
(Note: I have my graphics the entire way up)

Elden Arnaas.4870:

I’m reasonably certain that this thread is on a “Forbidden Topic” list.

I hadn’t thought of that, but you could be right.

It’s such a shame. I really like a lot of the things coming in the 2016 update and I really like seeing the increasing number of dev/gaile posts in various threads. They’re doing some good work. They’re getting things right in other places. But the lack of any response on this thread is an elder-dragon sized elephant in the room and I feel disappointed for them. It just gives the impression of …well… I really don’t want to say cowardice, but I can’t think of another word. Heck, at this point they should just come out and declare “Diz da visualz now, bro! Dealz with it!!”
That at least would be ballsy and I respect a good chutzpah.

re: at this point they should just come out and declare “Diz da visualz now, bro! Dealz with it!!” – Casting my vote for “I think this is absolutely not what they should do.”

re: chutzpah – chutzpah is not something you use on your customers.

My overall impression is, they’re going to leave everything the way it is until they figure out what they’re going to do, or decide just to move forward without altering their original plan. Either way, we won’t get any kind of communication until it is allowed, probably just before release.(or with release in patch notes)

Elden Arnaas.4870:

re: at this point they should just come out and declare “Diz da visualz now, bro! Dealz with it!!” – Casting my vote for “I think this is absolutely not what they should do.”

re: chutzpah – chutzpah is not something you use on your customers.

My overall impression is, they’re going to leave everything the way it is until they figure out what they’re going to do, or decide just to move forward without altering their original plan. Either way, we won’t get any kind of communication until it is allowed, probably just before release.(or with release in patch notes)

Well, maybe something more Shakespearean then, like:

“A wretched soul, bruised with adversity,
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;
But were we burdened with like weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain.
…..Oh, and the nerfs are staying. Sorry.”

Elden Arnaas.4870:

re: at this point they should just come out and declare “Diz da visualz now, bro! Dealz with it!!” – Casting my vote for “I think this is absolutely not what they should do.”

re: chutzpah – chutzpah is not something you use on your customers.

My overall impression is, they’re going to leave everything the way it is until they figure out what they’re going to do, or decide just to move forward without altering their original plan. Either way, we won’t get any kind of communication until it is allowed, probably just before release.(or with release in patch notes)

As Siobhan.5273 said, Gaile herself stated there are no restrictions for the Anet crew to post in the forums. In other words, it is allowed.

Maybe they forgot to back up the old spell visuals when they deleted them and they’re like oh crap, I really wanna bring em all back, but I forgot to make a backup ’afore I blew em all away. Ah dang.