Guild Wars 2

When players were complaining about the over-the-top spell effects in Guild Wars 2, we were asking for a slider that lets us reduce the level of particle effects. We were not asking for you to implement some crappy system that makes some effects completely vanish.

World vs. world zerg fights are currently unplayable. Many dynamic events are worse. Even in structured PvP, effects sometimes don’t pop up.

Also, this happens even if you turn off the “Effect LOD” option in the graphics menu.

The net effect of this patch is culling is actually worse because, at least in PvE, it now applies to spell effects on top of mobs and players. In world vs. world and PvP, it only applies to spell effects, but that’s still pretty bad.

It’s hard for me to understand what anet’s thinking with this kind of programming change.

Everyone hates culling, then they add something to the system that makes more. I was expecting a reduced spell effect, like pixels, totally graphically on my system.

Have you played today? Patch notes say a fixer patch went out last night to fix this bug. However I have been unable to play since that patch went live.

gaspara.4079:

Have you played today? Patch notes say a fixer patch went out last night to fix this bug. However I have been unable to play since that patch went live.

I have. It was still buggy for me.

But even if turning it off was possible, the problem is that this is a fix no one asked for. People wanted to reduce, not completely eliminate, spell effects.

Wouldn’t “reducing spell effects” require the art team to create a whole new set of “reduced” effects? Essentially every action would require two effects: the full version and the reduced version. I’m pretty sure it’s not as simple as simple as people make it out to be.

Removing spell effects is pretty darn easy to code, and rather than waiting 6 months to create new versions of every spell effect, we can have something that is functional now. It’s not pretty, but it works.

Katai.6240:

Wouldn’t “reducing spell effects” require the art team to create a whole new set of “reduced” effects? Essentially every action would require two effects: the full version and the reduced version. I’m pretty sure it’s not as simple as simple as people make it out to be.

Removing spell effects is pretty darn easy to code, and rather than waiting 6 months to create new versions of every spell effect, we can have something that is functional now. It’s not pretty, but it works.

There are already reduced spell effects. Just turn your graphics options down and you can see them.

Also, if they were just randomly removing them, that’d be great. That wasn’t their goal, and that’s a bug. Their goal was to scale down effects that are overlapping. “Effect LOD” = “Effect Level Of Detail.” They already, apparently, have the ability to reduce them. Their logic for when/how to do it is what’s broken and too complex. It’s not working properly.

As it stands though, the current LOD changes have increased FPS dramatically for me in bigger fights.

Iconik.8712:

As it stands though, the current LOD changes have increased FPS dramatically for me in bigger fights.

I did a world event yesterday and tested my framerate.

Before event started: 106 FPS

After event started: 8 FPS

Mine have gotten worse in fights. I used to maintain at least 15 or so.

I hadn’t noticed any of these issues. The effects on my screen are just, well, less, which is good. I can still see my own perfectly well. But then I don’t really go in for WvW or PvP, so maybe it’s a bigger issue here.

Hickeroar.9734:

Iconik.8712:

As it stands though, the current LOD changes have increased FPS dramatically for me in bigger fights.

I did a world event yesterday and tested my framerate.

Before event started: 106 FPS

After event started: 8 FPS

Mine have gotten worse in fights. I used to maintain at least 15 or so.

Oh. I was maintaining above that from the get go. Turn down/off post processing and click LOD. You should see a huge different. I can remember farming Southsun and getting 15-30 in those big fights. I’m in Pavillion nowadays and its significantly higher and you now how nuts those fights are.

Iconik.8712:

Hickeroar.9734:

Iconik.8712:

As it stands though, the current LOD changes have increased FPS dramatically for me in bigger fights.

I did a world event yesterday and tested my framerate.

Before event started: 106 FPS

After event started: 8 FPS

Mine have gotten worse in fights. I used to maintain at least 15 or so.

Oh. I was maintaining above that from the get go. Turn down/off post processing and click LOD. You should see a huge different. I can remember farming Southsun and getting 15-30 in those big fights. I’m in Pavillion nowadays and its significantly higher and you now how nuts those fights are.

Post processing has no impact whatsoever on my framerate. The only things that really seem to make any difference are shaders (massive drop in visual quality though), shadows (but only 1-2FPS), and reflections (I keep them off all the time). All other settings have no noticeable change on framerate for me at all.

Gosh I donno man. I have an above average PC anyway, but I like reducing things in games that have no huge impact on quality of visuals. PP and LOD seem like really good places to start. That’s interesting.

Load times have doubled for me, it sucks reading a champion has spawned over map chat and waypointing only to miss out because it took so long when that never happened to me before the patch(I even use a SSD).

It was definitely better last night than it was a couple of nights ago – I could see mobs last night, whereas a couple of nights ago I could only see red bars and mob titles.

I suppose my fps is a bit better but..

still have loads of invisible mobs. How on earth am I to fight champions in Cursed Shore if I can’t SEE them?

I actually died to a few AOEs from mobs I couldn’t see yesterday. :/

I agree, culling is bad in every way and adding it to spell effects just makes it worse. Anet is supposed to be removing culling from the game, not expanding it.

I did some of those events in that new pavilion place and I couldn’t see a kitten thing aside from effects. With all the mess flying around it just turned into mashing keys when they were off cool down and the occasional heal. No wonder I don’t do WvW zerg