Guild Wars 2

Post-patch fireball looks like shooting with a nerf gun. Seriously, I understand that the visual clutter must be reduced but this? I mean, really? That’s like shooting confetti.

This war against visual clutter is going too far. We get turned into a pea shooter, meanwhile a Guardian can still press F1 and make an enemy a blue fire blob.

In terms of skills that are visually interesting, fireball—before the “decluttering”—felt like it had weight and substance. You know, like pitching a ball of fire. It’s even the skill that originally sold me on the class (oh dang “fire mage” that looks cool).

Now it’s kind of like … like tossing a BB with a streamer attached to it.

It is perplexing, to make such a significant change, especially when (and I’m pretty sure a bunch of folks will agree with me, here) I don’t recall a particular moment where there was a pressing agitation of “you know these fireballs are just too darned big and in the way”.

Perhaps something halfway between the old and the new would’ve been more interesting. Or maybe even some kind of “tone down other player’s graphical effects” toggle in client options (many have been asking this for a while). This mainly affects melee classes and would be helpful.

I mean, yes, I can live with it, but I remember reading about the design stuff for Guild Wars 2 back in development. There was even a video posted about sound development for fire and its many uses (you can hear some elements of what would later become fireball in the video, too). So it’s clear a ton of thought went into the aesthetics of these skills. Fireball was supposed to be a big, dangerous hurtling wad of fire. To pull the rug out from under it—as the OP said—is very “what”.

Yeah, so I understand the need to cull down the spell effects, but was fireball that big of issue? I can see how the impact effect probably was in large groups, but the projectile itself looks incredibly…. lame

If you look at air auto attack on staff it’s still a substantial feeling effect—the fireball really does look like a pea shooter now.

Anyhow, wouldn’t mind seeing it somewhat returned to where it was previously, or at least for the projectile to have some a little more “mass”. I would imagine there is some kind of middle ground where it has less visual noise but still looks like you are throwing a fireball.

To me this visual culling is stupid.

In FFXIV, you have an option to cull OTHER PEOPLE’S EFFECTS, and leave yours intact.

This has to be a glitch, right?

I mean, “visual noise” shouldn’t mean “the entire fireball,” right?

/throwawaymystaff

I am not going to use this burning pink-ponk ball… Now i have reason to play daggers.

It’s really a sad time to be an elementalist, specially with the complete lack of Tempest improvements since Beta weekend 3 and how bad tempest is in general (specially the rushed out Rebound skill).

After the nerfs to Meteornado, Line casting and big red circles on meteors, staff ele really took a dive.

Koviko.3248:

This has to be a glitch, right?

No. They also did something similiar to orbital strike (engi mortar f5), just to switch back 1 month later because the skill wasn’t even visible anymore.

Tempest is saved.

Hallelujah.

On Bifrost now you only see the ranibow… yuk what was Anet thinking? Do they even test these things?

I think they forgot to rename it to firebolt.

Why can’t they make it so that it only applies to other people’s skill instead of the player’s character?

Also, the visual noise part is mostly the light. Most of the time the boss is burned bright with all the Guardian’s and other explosion skills. The fireball is just a minor part of it. Restore fireball and reduce the explosion instead.

Or a better idea: make the selected target always have a silhouette outlined during the fight. For example, a red silhouette border, with gradient inward. That way, you can still make out the boss action during boss fight.

It’s so unbearably ugly I can’t imagine what they were thinking. It’s like throwing a firecracker at my enemy…

The saddest part is I know they don’t care and will never change it back or read any of this.

yea im just gonna stick to dagger now. fireball should be renamed ‘Firecracker’. it looks nothing like a fireball no more

Anet hate for elementalist fun continues…

annddd my main attack is now a peanut gun.

They should have an option for people to use the shiny super particalled effects.

Also eruption looks like a small feeble stack of gravel

I don’t even play Elementalist anymore, but I think this could be reverted. It’s slightly pitiful to watch people lobbing tiny flaming ping pong balls.

MadRabbit.3179:

Tempest is saved.

Hallelujah.

LMAO

I like it.

I was in hotjoin having some lol’s on zerker staff. Nobody could see my fireballs, or track them. I was stood on roof throwing 4k auto attacks like nobodies buisness, not a care in the world

Oh, well there goes what drew me to ele in the first place.

I can safely say that if THIS were the original animation I would never have made an ele as I could never take it seriously.

kitten Anet, GW2 is NEVER going to take off in the ESports word the way you still seem to believe it can. That ship not only sailed, but it was never docked to begin with.

GW2 esports can finally take off once they’ve ruined the game’s aesthetics. Well worth it ANet.

You monsters. What did you do to my Fireball skill? Why would you do this? You ruined it. Completely.

ahahahahaha
aahahahahhahahaaha
aahahahaahahahahhaahahaah
fffffffffffffffffaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaahahaahaha

What the hell.

Fireball went from being a Firebasketball to being a Firetennisball. This is unacceptable really as this completely destroys the fantasy of being a staff elementalist.

They cropped the hell out of it. Look’s horrible now.
And you can no longer hit Archers on the wall in WvW with anymore with the splash dmg from it, and not even the inner gate in sm. Another fail patch…

And yea, i got obstructed in the middle of SM at the lord today.

Yeah, the reactions here aren’t even overreactions. I can’t believe how small my fireball is now. Looks even more ridiculous coming from a charr character. I really hope they revert this.

Jesus christ, it’s too bad to be true. What the hell went through their minds.

The old animation was so smooth… It’s hard to describe, but it was very satisfying to watch.

My charr looks ridiculous now, lol.

Zenith.7301:

To me this visual culling is stupid.

In FFXIV, you have an option to cull OTHER PEOPLE’S EFFECTS, and leave yours intact.

Yeah, and in every other MMO ever.

Well, the fireball also received a slight velocity increase, making it more reliable to hit. At least there’s that!

Should rename it to Flare XD /i did also notice the projectile is speedier

What’s funny is the wind up animation there’s still a ton of fire, and then when you throw it’s a little tiny golf ball sized projectile. This was stupid and something literally nobody asked for.

Einlanzer.1627:

Zenith.7301:

To me this visual culling is stupid.

In FFXIV, you have an option to cull OTHER PEOPLE’S EFFECTS, and leave yours intact.

Yeah, and in every other MMO ever.

Which Anet is constantly trying to remind us all that they are not, by not having things that SHOULD be in the game as QoL improvements or just…y’know…common sense.

Absolutely atrocious change. For the love of the gods, change it back.

I casted Firepebble about 100 times because I just couldn’t believe what happened to it.

This skill is a joke, can we get a medium at least? It’s awful.

It looks ridiculous and completely out of place. It’s now dwarfed by all the other elements’ autoattacks. This needs to be reverted.

Dear ANET,

I love you very much. It is the truth. You have made a game that I have played for many hours, and greatly enjoy to share with friends.

However, you have ruined an animation I greatly enjoyed by turning it into a joke. When I first heard of the change, I though people were exaggerating. This was not so. It is actually tennis ball sized.

This is not game-breaking, and I am not threatening to leave or anything, but I seriously doubt that any measure of reasoned thought went into the new animation. It is actually more underwhelming than “flare” from GW1…I never thought that this could be true of GW2, but it is.

Please reconsider your animation choices, this was truly a poorly designed ‘fix’ for the visual noise problem.

Sincerely,
Darksabre (now and forever an ele).

That is ridiculous. It looks like my Ele is throwing ignited matches at his enemies. How the hell could anyone at Anet who is actually earning money for their advices say “Yeah, that was totally necessary, I am serious” Oo

I guess it was something like: “most of them money-sheeps are playing tempest with warhorn anyway. Noone will bother about Fireball.” -.-

The visual effects were what held me in this game from the beginning. Either Anet is gauging the response to this sorely disappointing move and may change it back or they simply don’t care and others, e.g. guardian, will be next. I felt stupid for leveling an engi just to play with the old orbital strike. Black Desert NA can’t come soon enough.

When I first saw that little projectile I couldn’t believe my eyes. All of the impact of the skill is gone now, and it went from a visually amazing skill to an extremely bland one. In addition, the skill no longer fits visually with the rest of the staff skills and just looks very out of place due to its tiny size. The flames that appear on your hand are also much larger than the actual fireball, which makes it look even more out of place.

What do we have now? Do we have a fire arrow? Do we have a fire bullet? I don’t know what we have, but it sure isn’t a fireball. Aesthetics are a very big part of this game, so fireball has to be reverted immediately with the next hotfix. Fireball itself wasn’t even a major part of the visual clutter and with the amount of posts that this thread already has, it is clear that people don’t like this change.

Between this and the constant crashes after the update I am really losing my motivation to play. And yes I have the 64-bit client and it worked well before the patch. Please fix these issues with the next patch.

Fireball was fine as it was before. Why is this game going downhill superfast? This game was so epic and fun at the release, and now nothing makes sense any longer. It makes me sad. The devs seems to have no clue any longer.

Dexlmentia.7391:

The visual effects were what held me in this game from the beginning. Either Anet is gauging the response to this sorely disappointing move and may change it back or they simply don’t care and others, e.g. guardian, will be next. I felt stupid for leveling an engi just to play with the old orbital strike. Black Desert NA can’t come soon enough.

Black Dessert is a bit over the top again on the visual effects. They got the best ingame graphics and clothing physx from any other MMO’s that i’ve seen thoug.

well at least i have black desert to look forward to with the great visuals ^.^

Change it back please. I rarely come to forums to complain but what’s the point of being a mage if you strip away all the spell effects? I never have a problem with clutter from effects and I play with everything maxed out.

What is the kitten point of the graphics option specifically labeled as “limit the detail of particle effects” if you’re just going to force this sort of thing on EVERYONE?

I’m really tired of these abrupt blanketed changes Anet has been throwing around for the last few months. I thought about working on The Legend today, but now I’m not even going to bother – seems the only winning move these days is not to play.

Stupid.

Easy fix: give players the graphical option to cull/reduce all other player’s graphical effects. Done.

e-sports?

For spectators only: all graphical effects have been reduced. Done.

Throwing matchsticks is not fun!

I thought it was a graphics glitch when I noticed the fire pebble going out of my ele´s hands, its so ridiculous that a big part of a profession identity got lost with the removal of a mere visual effect.

Seriously, I want it back….

Griever.7480:

Also eruption looks like a small feeble stack of gravel

That looks really bad. I think Anet didn’t understand people were complaining about the big aoe lights like those of the guardian, not skills like eruption that are just a pile of rocks.

I guess since in comparison to revenant, reaper and guardian skills eruption damage is so low they decided to reduce its size instead of making it a better skill.