Guild Wars 2

Is there a way to reduce the amount of visual effects displayed on your screen during gameplay? There are many skills and utilities with large and/or rich animations, there are lavish aoe effects, there are combo fields and so on. All of these combined together often become just a colourful and flashing mess.

I consider myself quite experienced with MMOs and computer gaming in general. However in some situations, especially in group PvE, due to the excess amount of visual effects displayed it is hard for me to see where my cursor is, let alone to tell which side the monster is facing (I play a BS thief and proper positioning is an essential part of my gameplay).

Well, you can olways consider reducing the graphic settings. That should help a bit.

I’m not sure he’s complaining about frame rate. He means all the effects on screen make it hard to figure out what’s going on because they visually block your view. I don’t think there is a way. A good number of players complained about this at release, when players were much more densely clumped in the initial levelling wave, and Anet never responded.

Without having tried it myself: I’ve heard it suggested that you turn off post processing. It won’t reduce the quantity of particles on your screen, but it should diminish the amount of light they produce, which goes a long way for adding clarity.

One of my guildmates has all particle effects turned off but he did it via his graphics card. Not sure how or even if you can do that as well.