WHY IT FAILS: CONVEYANCE! or WHY I CAN’T SEE CRAP!!!
This is probably the second post now, and you may have noticed the uploaded screenshots of gameplay below, with absolutely no indication what is going on.
Well… that’s the point. In these screenshots, you have no idea what is going on. You can’t see the individual contributions or clutch plays. You can’t see the tells, or even the enemies, you can’t see the animations for their attacks. You have no idea when you’re getting hit, and who’kittenting you. This creates an unintelligible blob of numbers and flashy effects. Worst part is, this affects classes differently: My ele has it so much worse than my necro (which, even then, gets drowned out by other players).
That doesn’t even show the worst of it. In that entire HotW fight I was constantly fighting with my camera, which would get hung up on decorations in that tiny, slanted room. Also, the boss did 8k damage per hit in a poorly telegraphed 360 degrees attack that looked like it was only in front of him, so even on my defensive d/d build, I am constantly one or two hits from death. All these screenshots had maximum culling and LoD reduction on.
Conveyance is the act of making something known to someone, and for action games it is really important. This is done through telegraphs, cast meters, AoE indicators, or a recognizable pattern. These only work if it is possible to see the kitten enemy, and currently you can’t. It is of the utmost importance that, should a player die, they can say “I should’ve stunned him there” or “I should use X utility to stop Y enemy”, or “Wait 2 seconds, then dodge, then get close again”.
If they don’t know what went wrong, one of three things happens.
#1: They declare the content “too hard” then quit playing.
#2: They timidly hang back and range at max distance in PVT gear, terrified of the big scary attacks that’ll do way too much damage to them.
#3: They’ll get angry at other players for not supporting them properly.
Because, again, if you don’t teach players about the mechanics, then they don’t know what they’re missing. That whole “rise to the challenge” thing is extremely rare, occurring only to people who have good leadership skills, patience, problem solving skills, and drive all at the same time: 4 epic traits that almost no one on the internet has. When I say 5%, that’s an estimate so liberal that it makes Obama blush.
The inability to see other player contributions doesn’t help, either. In each of these screenshots, you probably don’t know much of what anyone is doing. Heck, you don’t know what I’m doing, other than taking a screenshot. Neither do my teammates. I mean, I can see some white lines, and one guy has his shield up… so yeah? The guy who said “the stack randomly fails” has a point: you don’t know why it is that, in one circumstance, everything gets completely facerolled, but in another you die horribly and shame your family. The only guy who does know is the one who’s keeping everyone alive.
This isn’t just flashing lights, either. Many things just aren’t told to players. Like which attacks are unblockable or not, or how scaling works. Many are from bad design, such as the red rings in the teqautl encounter not rendering properly, or how even though teqqy moves his ground targeted hit box stays stationary. The list could just go on forever… I might have to make a separate post just to contain all of the problems individually.
I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.
