Casting spells is one of the most fun things to do in any video game. GW2 has a decent amount of really awesome spells, at least when reading them. Nice damage, variety, functionality, really nice spells. They all look very weak though.
I am playing this game on max graphics settings, and the spells appear very minimalist. Armor looks great, character models look great, the world looks beautiful, the spells look weak. It just doesn’t feel like I’m casting spells half the time I’m using them. For a few examples; lightning looks more like slightly blue webbing, lightning storms hardly can be seen. Lightning in itself should appear deadly and powerful, so bright it darkens what surrounds it. The elementalist’s rain ability is just a few white lines moving downwards, fireballs seem to disappear upon impact, meteor showers don’t seem to make any impact at all, frozen ground doesn’t look like ice in any way (the blue blur just looks lazy), auras are crazy dull… there should be no bubble. Fire aura would be fire and black smoke and cinders rising and falling from the toon. Lightning Aura should be a heavy amount of lightning swirling in many directions, sparks and blue light glowing from the elementalist’s position..that sort of thing. Except for the earthen aura (a thick layer of dirty stones forming like armor around the toon would bring more life to it), the earth spells look good as well as mesmer’s. Mesmer deserves some really cool aura effects, something either trippy or magical. Necromancer really, really needs work. The transformation looks great, so do the summons, the rest does not. Most of the spells hardly take shape and make the class very boring unless transformed.
Some reasons I could see that it was rationalized to be this way was to preserve the appearance of the battlefield so no one is confused. Also, the game is not too taxing on our machines especially in raids and WvsW. Players may take advantage of spell effects and hide in them.. eh that’s the only negative thing I can think players could do to “take advantage” of better spell visuals. Also, gives you time to come up with additional content to play through.
Well, usually battles aren’t standing still anyway.. this solves two problems. If a fireball’s impact creates a small explosion of fire smoke and cinders, the smog might make it difficult to see especially if there’s a lot of exploding projectiles. Because npc’s and players are always circling eachother, charging forward, rolling around, the smoke, explosions, fog, shouldn’t be in the way for a very long time. Especially if the smoke and fog vanish quickly. The targeting system makes it easy to keep track of what to kill anyway. You’ve got a great way of showing when a boss is performing heavy aoe damage on the ground, it won’t be out of view as long as the spell effects don’t linger too long. As far as the new spell effects being taxing in heavy battlefields, a simple slider or graphics option could switch on and off these effects, keep the ones you’ve got for more performance if needed.
To sum it up, making a presence of environmental effects of the spells, will bring life to the spells themselves. Fire chars grass, even WoW created that effect and GW2 has toppled WoW in every other way. Think about how these spells interact in a fictional world, how the elements interact with matter in our world, and illustrate them to make the spells feel like there’s something significant being done. I love this game, have been playing it since beta, and I’ve always been disappointed in the appearance of the spells, and every time I’ve spoken about it in-game others agree. Its a very simple thing, but it would make playing a spell caster a very interactive, lifelike experience.