Guild Wars 2

Below “Enable camera shake”, add:
[ x ] Disable skill particle effects

First way you could implement this:
very barebones but awesome solution, possibly the easiest way to implement this.

Disable all visual skill effects that are tied to the skill itself, leaving us with only:

• character skill body animation (model animation),
• red/white AoE rings,
• skill sound,
• condition/boon effects and sounds.

For example, Earthshaker:

• Animation: your character jumps/leaps and slams his hammer.
• AoE ring: enemies see a red circle.
• Skill effect: you leave a white trail as you leap, and when you slam the ground there’s a black rippled effect.
• Sound: there’s a “woosh” sound and a “clink” sound.
• Status effect: the enemy is stunned and has swirly white lines and dots on his head.

What I want is the option to disable the skill effect only, for all skills used by allies and enemies. (You could keep it for the player himself — or not, I’d prefer not — but do whichever is easier for you to implement)

People would still be able to know what the skills do because of the character skill animation, skill sound, boon/condition effects + voices, and AoE red/white rings.
.

.
Would it make the game difficult to play? No!

The player would still be able to tell any important skills from:

• What others say (“How many ales have I had?”, “I’m exposed!”, “I dare you, hit me!”)
• The status effects on allies and enemies (wind by their feet, red sparks on their hands, black clouds in front of eyes for blind, immobilize chains, yellow retaliation fist, purple confusion cloud, etc)
• The status effect icons under the enemies/allies health bar.

In fact, it would be easier to play, because now you can actually see the stuff that matters! Generally those things get buried underneath all the skill fireworks!
.

Being able to see this stuff on allies and enemies would let you react to it quickly, and you’d become a more skilled player.
Now you can remove that person’s immobilize or cripple, because you can see it.
Now you can take advantage of that other enemy being chilled or poisoned, because you can see it.

You wanted eSport, didn’t you? This will help!
The insane skill fireworks makes the whole game have a huge fake difficulty.

Second way to implement this, but more complicated (and honestly, I would be 100% happy with the other, much easier option, and would give you hugs and kisses!):

Selecting this option blocks all skill effects on all allies and enemies, except those that have these words in the skill tooltip:

• Heal
• Elite
• “Combo Field”
• Consecration
• Symbol
• Ward
• Elixir
• Attunement
• Glamour
• Mark
• Well
  (I think I got everything, let me know if I missed something)
• And then allow skill animation for the first skill (number 1).

It would still display white and red Area of Effect rings as those are separate from the skill effect. As well as sounds, model/body animation, and de/buffs.

Skills that create allies (minions, clones, banners, turrets, etc) are not bugged by this, because those are allies, not skill effects.

Agreed, but I personally would love a low-particle option. I want to anticipate what skill is coming towards me, but in the lowest graphical style possible. WvW is simply too much too handle with all the aoe’s.

Of course one won’t rule out the other.

Yes please. Particle effects have come a long way since beta’s, but they’re still too much for me. Even a slider option or a ‘high-medium-low particle effects’ would already be a life saver in many places.

Every now and then I get kicked by lupi because he was surrounded by flashy blue flames from the guardian’s Virtue of Justice and I simply couldn’t see his animations. Or the Grawl Shaman’s bow attack becoming invisible etc.

Just toning down virtue of justice’s burning as a starter would solve most of my issues.

I would like that too, Bright, but they would never get it done.
We already have the High, but they would need to edit each skill twice: once for Medium and again for Low. It would be way too much work and way too time consuming for them.
So I can understand why they don’t want to bother giving us this option.

But if they simply gave us the option to… completely remove the particles… it would be a lot easier for them to implement, since all they have to do is tell the game client not to load the particle effects. They wouldn’t even have to edit each skill’s effect. Just tell the game not to load any skill particle effects.
So it would a lot easier and not time consuming like the other option.

I know they will never do what you suggested, it would be too much work. I’d rather have the option to at least disable all the skill particle effects, than to be stuck with what we have now.
I think it’s a good compromise.

The skill sounds, skill voices, the character’s body animation, skill activation time, and the boon and condition visual and voices already tell the player everything he needs to know to recognize the skills. The particles are a nice touch, but for the most part, unnecessary.

I really do think it would help eSport and pvp/wvw in general, as well as PvE.
I can “tolerate” (sigh) the screen fireworks in PvE, even if it makes me die or just stand there and spam attacks because I have no clue what’s going on anyway since I can’t see anything but fireworks (sigh), but if I didn’t have screen fireworks covering all the action, I would be able to tell what’s going on… Then I would definitely play WvW and PvP more often. I’d love to become good enough to do tPvP, but with all these skill effects covering up my screen, that will never happen.

Why start a fight when I can’t see what’s happening? :-(

lorazcyk.8927:

In fact, it would be easier to play, because now you can actually see the stuff that matters!

And that’s why it won’t happen.

Iruwen.3164:

lorazcyk.8927:

In fact, it would be easier to play, because now you can actually see the stuff that matters!

And that’s why it won’t happen.

I think you misunderstood, this would give no advantage or make the game easier to face roll, by easy, I mean that it would only make the game how it’s supposed to be, being able to see what skills actually do, leading to more skilled game play. A game claiming to be an esport can’t have the important stuff covered up by fireworks. You need to see the important stuff to fight properly. Right now the skill effects make it as if I were playing soccer blindbolfolded. Sure, I could manage, but it would make more sense not to wear a blindfold.

It would be an advantage if you turn it off for that reason, so everybody would turn it off, and that’s not how ANet wants people to play the game. Just like people turn down everything in shooters to see the enemy earlier.

I would like to be able to turn them off or turn them down to reduce lag. Pretty decent computer, but not the best Internet connection. It’s bad enough that half the people in LA are invisible to me until I stand still in one spot for awhile. And there are fewer kabooms going on there (usually).

The flashy effects is just too much. Fighting a boss or such with a lot of players makes that NPC a ball of light and you are dependent on your life bar to make sure you are not standing where you shouldn’t.

They could make an option where you can turn other players effects off and a seperate option for your own effects. This can help players that are suseptable to migranes and reduce the excessive lag at boss battles

Iruwen.3164
So you’re saying Anet doesn’t want players to become good players? They want players to be bad players and just sit there and DPS because they can’t see what’s going on the screen anyway because of all the particle effects?
Anet, you monster!!! (just kidding)

It’s not my fault Anet made the skill particles so strong. If the particles were simple, you’d be able to see what’s going on.
Since Anet won’t make effects simple, then I want to disable them so I can become a good player and fight skillfully.

What you say about FPS is not the same. There it’s done for advantage, here it’s done to play the game as it was intended. I’m pretty sure Anet would prefer players can see what’s going on with combat, so they can play skillfully.
.

Hamfast.8719
It’s not just about having a powerful computer or not, it’s about being able to see what’s happening so you can become a good player and play well.
(Like Gw1)

I can’t play skillfully because I can’t see what’s going on.
.

Torca.5162
Exactly, I end up playing the interface, not the game, because I can’t see what’s going on.

(Anet had “play the game, not the interface” as of their goals)

I wonder, like how Immersive Combat Mode can prevent certain parts of the UI from loading, if there’s a way to disable particle effects from loading.

I want the game to require player skill, but all these particle effects make it so all you can really do it kite and spam attacks. You can’t see what’s going on because the effects hide everything that’s important to make good fighting decisions.

It’s also a problem with just one or two players, not just large groups.
I generally play solo and the particle effects are AWFUL and I can’t see what’s happening..

This could also get red/white AoE rings back to previous ones, being only a circle as it used to be.

What do you mean, Shaez?

lorazcyk.8927:

Since Anet won’t make effects simple, then I want to disable them so I can become a good player and fight skillfully.

Disabling effects doesn’t make you a better player. Keeping an overview of what’s happening no matter if there’s a lot of effects going on makes you a good player.

Iruwen.3164:

lorazcyk.8927:

Since Anet won’t make effects simple, then I want to disable them so I can become a good player and fight skillfully.

Disabling effects doesn’t make you a better player. Keeping an overview of what’s happening no matter if there’s a lot of effects going on makes you a good player.

That would be true if the effects didn’t cover the entire screen. It’s impossible to keep an overview of what’s happening because the effects cover the whole screen. It’s like being blindfolded. Not even exaggerating.

Disabling effects would allow me to be able to see what’s going on and keep an overview of what’s happening. This would allow players to actually see what’s going on, and react to what they see, thus giving them the opportunity to become a better player.

It doesn’t even AUTOMATICALLY make you a better player, the player is the one who has to realize they have to react to what’s happening.

However:
They don’t have the opportunity to become a better player if they can’t see what’s going on,
if they can’t see what’s going on they can’t keep an overview of what’s happening,
if they can’t keep an overview of what’s happening, they can’t attempt to react to something that happened,
if they don’t have the opportunity to react to something that happened because they can’t see what happened with all the effects covering up the screen, they can’t become a better player.
They don’t have the opportunity to become a better player if they can’t see what’s going on…

I actually never have a problem with that except in huge WvW zergs. And that option would give you such a massive advantage in WvW that it just won’t happen.

Good for you, but it doesn’t help me one bit?

I know, because I have no idea how to change this. I see your problem though. The proper fix would have to affect everybody and not depend on an option which would then be mandatory.

That is pretty stupid lol. “massive advantage in wvw” dont make me laugh.
It’s really common to have that option in online games these days.

There are two reasons it is necessary and 1 is related to 2.

One Anet went overboard with those stupid aoe effects that take up so much of your screen.

Two older rigs like my own struggle on the lowest settings in large aoe environments.

Better computers already have an advantage over older ones, this wouldn’t make anything unfair, which it is right now. Not even counting the fact the option would be available to everyone.

Honestly, I’m fairly sure most people don’t actually know what particle effects are and are just here out to troll the suggestions forum. The aoe’s/spells en masse take up way too much GPU to many pc’s resulting in insane fps drops and screen freezes. If you consider being able to turn your camera an advantage you are clearly clueless.

Not only do the particle effects cause you to not even be able to physically see the target but they also cover up things like AoE circles as well. In the Settler Instigator fights when I’m meleeing the boss I don’t know that the AoE circles near him are there until I realize that I’m burning because they’re covered by the particle effects.

I’d love to see a option to disable or scale particle effects but with Anet’s record for the last few months I don’t hold out any hope for it. They seem to have more important issues, like how to get us to buy more gems.

lorazcyk.8927:

Below “Enable camera shake”, add:
[ x ] Disable skill particle effects

---

First way you could implement this:
very barebones but awesome solution, possibly the easiest way to implement this.

---

Disable all visual skill effects that are tied to the skill itself, leaving us with only:

• character skill body animation (model animation),
• red/white AoE rings,
• skill sound,
• condition/boon effects and sounds.

For example, Earthshaker:

• Animation: your character jumps/leaps and slams his hammer.
• AoE ring: enemies see a red circle.
• Skill effect: you leave a white trail as you leap, and when you slam the ground there’s a black rippled effect.
• Sound: there’s a “woosh” sound and a “clink” sound.
• Status effect: the enemy is stunned and has swirly white lines and dots on his head.

What I want is the option to disable the skill effect only, for all skills used by allies and enemies. (You could keep it for the player himself — or not, I’d prefer not — but do whichever is easier for you to implement)

People would still be able to know what the skills do because of the character skill animation, skill sound, boon/condition effects + voices, and AoE red/white rings.
.

---

.
Would it make the game difficult to play? No!

The player would still be able to tell any important skills from:

• What others say (“How many ales have I had?”, “I’m exposed!”, “I dare you, hit me!”)
• The status effects on allies and enemies (wind by their feet, red sparks on their hands, black clouds in front of eyes for blind, immobilize chains, yellow retaliation fist, purple confusion cloud, etc)
• The status effect icons under the enemies/allies health bar.

In fact, it would be easier to play, because now you can actually see the stuff that matters! Generally those things get buried underneath all the skill fireworks!
.

Being able to see this stuff on allies and enemies would let you react to it quickly, and you’d become a more skilled player.
Now you can remove that person’s immobilize or cripple, because you can see it.
Now you can take advantage of that other enemy being chilled or poisoned, because you can see it.

---

You wanted eSport, didn’t you? This will help!
The insane skill fireworks makes the whole game have a huge fake difficulty.

I don’t think that seeing no particle effects at all would be that great even though it will surely boost performance in WvW and World Boss encounters , what i would suggest instead is the addition of a scalable slider in the options menu that will allow you to downscale the use of them to the point where you’ll see just enough particle effects to not affect your gameplay in any sort of way ; it will surely help alot of people , i know it will help me because atm World Bosses and big WvW Zergs are basically unplayable

I agree with this, maybe we could have different settings for difficulty levels such as low, medium, high and similar.