Hi! This is a story about why I’m playing GW2 on “Shaders = Medium” settings.
Game is running swiftly on any settings on my PC, so there is nothing about performance – let’s just close this question. There is big image in attachment to this post, very useful to understand my idea.
When I play with high shaders my character is glowing with strange light. I think it is magical – because it looks unnatural. On first slide you can see it in the middle of the day on Grand Plaza of Lion’s Arch. I pointed glowing with red arrows. Looks cool.
But, with time – you start to see it’s strange behavior:
1) It is always shines. No matter if you on top of Shiverpeaks or in darkest hole in Tyria – your armor looks like Lyssa herself point her sight to you.
2) It shines with white light only. No matter what is your environment – blue, red or green. Your character’s glowing is white. Maybe it is because white and red are GW2 brand colors…
3) Light is shines always from right side. No matters in what place or what direction you stand, glowing is always on right from your point of view(camera). I think, that is because all characters in GW2 are an heroes and must do everything right. Even lights…
Now serious. I understand there is a lot to do for GW2 dev team. I understand that any update on light/shadowcasting in game is kind of big work. Real-looking lights are great, but let’s be realists – there will no any big tech improvements in GW2 tech part anytime soon. But I really one of that persons who don’t care about count of polygons or version of DirectX game is running. I care about esthetics. And this glowing is not so good. Human skin just do not glows like this, wax does. Same about armor’s leather. It looks unnatural.
I want to suggest two ways:
a) easier one. Add option to set up shaders and character’ lightning settings separately. Because right now my character on Medium shaders looks better. On High shaders world is really good. So I’m now choosing between “play on Medium” and “play on high it is cool, but do not look at your character” Like a work it a couple lines of code. No need to test this addition hard. Just another option in .cfg file.
b) hard one. Make this glowing fit environment. Like I see it – it is one dynamic light /shadow (with really annoying FFFFFFFF color). Make it really dynamic – let game calculate color, direction and strength of this light in real time from world’s properties. It is much more complicated, but I think – possible in near future.
My problem is not such a big thing. GW2 is a great game. But these details make difference between diamond and brilliant.
PS: Sorry for mah English – I’m from Russia and not good in languages. I really do not want to whine or be offensive to anybody – just I can possible impress my thoughts inaccurate.
PostPS: Big thanks to administrations of Great Cities Hoelbrak and Lion’s Arch for granting permission to make screenshots.
