Guild Wars 2

Ryou.2398:

Ganathar.4956:

Ryou.2398:

coso.9173:

look more girly? how is having sexier and skimpier armor girly at all? women and men have equally interesting things to show, it only depends on what the viewer is interested in. men have used leotards and shown their bare legs for quite some time too.

You clearly didnt read my post, there is a difference between showing masculine sexy and men wearing a mini skirt. And it doesnt only depend on the viewer it isnt our game, they can put whatever they want into it, regardless certain things would be just silly if a guy really wants to dress as a female why cant they you know role a female character?

Female and male characters should dress differently, that much is true. However, having male skirts that show some leg isn’t problematic at all. There are a few cultures in real life with male uniforms that have short skirts.

Well I didnt say I had an issue with that but there are actually allot of skirt armor already for males, I dont know why people are asking for it to be honest. Anyways everyone knows about celtic kilts.

I’m mostly interested in male skimpy armor because of my norn warrior really. Skimpy armor fits norns quite a bit in my opinion, and I wish there were more heavy options for males. You are right that there a lots of skirts (mostly heavy), but most of them are pretty long.

coso.9173:

no one is asking for female skimpy armor to be removed. people just want it to be more equal. meaning both genders have skimpy and covered options across all races and armor weights

That’s fair, but that does also mean that every combo, except female light armor, needs lots of more revealing options. Female light armor should just maintain its current ratio, which means that both skimpy and concealing armors should be released at a roughly equal rate.

Ryou.2398:

coso.9173:

look more girly? how is having sexier and skimpier armor girly at all? women and men have equally interesting things to show, it only depends on what the viewer is interested in. men have used leotards and shown their bare legs for quite some time too.

You clearly didnt read my post, there is a difference between showing masculine sexy and men wearing a mini skirt. And it doesnt only depend on the viewer it isnt our game, they can put whatever they want into it, regardless certain things would be just silly if a guy really wants to dress as a female why cant they you know role a female character?

Female and male characters should dress differently, that much is true. However, having male skirts that show some leg isn’t problematic at all. There are a few cultures in real life with male uniforms that have short skirts.

Sweet Sanity.8593:

If we are talking about legendaries I still have to pve my butt off for them

Then ask for a WvW way to get Gifts of Exploration. Or even better, ask for an actual WvW legendary. I still don’t get why PvP gets its own legendary backpack, while WvW is merely stuck as being an inconvenience for people who want to get the old legendaries.

Sweet Sanity.8593:

I should go to the pve forums and complain about doing too much pve for things I want

That would be a pretty valid complaint, if this patch wasn’t the one that eliminated most of your need to do PvE.

Karmapolice.4193:

Am I remembering incorrectly? I am almost positive that when the game first came out, the forums asked for less butt capes and less trench coats. And I am also almost positive there was a dev response along the lines of “okay, but armor takes time to make”
So, three years later, and we are still getting butt capes and trench coats. Ugh. Sometimes, I really wonder about whoever is in charge of approving armor designs.

Yup, I’m getting tired of the buttcapes. The devs have had plenty of opportunities now to add actual light pants and medium shirts, but they keep adding buttcapes and trenchcoats instead. The only redeeming quality here is that the medium armor is not exactly a trenchcoat. However, it is still very similar in design.

TheShortOne.9641:

Maybe if you designed armor for women that wasn’t just a bra-shaped piece of metal, this issue wouldn’t be happening in the first place. I understand the need to cater to everyone’s taste, and I’m all for it- if someone wants to wear a battle bikini, let them!- but there are so few options for light armor that DON’T leave their stomachs exposed, for those of us who like something more practical, that the excuse “oh well people want this” holds no water. Yeah, some people want battle bikinis…there are plenty. Give us some armor that ACTUALLY PROTECTS US. Sorry, my main (fem!sylvari) doesn’t really find it appropriate to flash her navel at everyone she meets.

That being said…a good quick solution to this would be, yes, to change the chest plate to the male variant. Remember…six cups, or none at all ;3

There is plenty of light armor that covers your characters. Have a look here before jumping to conclusions. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Human_female_light_armor

Female light armor is actually the closest you can get to balanced at the moment. On the other hand, male light armor is the exact opposite, almost no choice whatsoever. Still, I do agree that charr females look very weird with boob cups. This armor set is definitely not the one that should be the same across all females.

Mido.4920:

AliamRationem.5172:

Vyrulisse.1246:

Why does it get annoying though? Why are people so against sexualization and revealing things? I’ll never understand that.

It annoys me because I just don’t like these skins and it’s difficult to find female skins that aren’t revealing. It seems the options are very limited.

I don’t see what there is to understand about that. It’s simple preference. You have yours. I have mine. The game should cater to both tastes.

I agree with you there.
Ofc, many people like the skimpy armors but there are also many who dont want their female character to look like that and these people have very limited options when it comes to armor choice.

It would just be fair to have an equal amount of revealing and not so revealing armor. Simply for the people who are growing tired of it.

In GW 1 there was a bigger variety and it was good that way.

Its not about taking the revealing armors away from you. Its about giving more alternatives to it.

You aren’t truly asking for an equal amount of revealing and non-revealing armor, because if you haven’t noticed, there are more concealing armors than revealing armors in this game. Only female light armor has some form of balance between concealing and revealing. You probably think that there is a lot of revealing armor, because there are many people who like to use those sets and you see them all the time.

Have a look here:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Human_female_heavy_armor
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Human_female_medium_armor
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Human_female_light_armor

I do agree that males need more variety in their armor, especially when it comes to light armor. I also think that light armor needs some pants. However, I can’t believe that there are people who honestly think that the majority of armors are skimpy.

dekou.6012:

This annoys me because it seems to be a repeat of the Phlanx armor debacle. For those who don’t remember, this is what Phalanx looks like:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Phalanx_armor_human_male_front.jpg

Wow, that’s cool! I’ll just go and buy it for my female Warrior…

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Phalanx_armor_human_female_front.jpg

…wait, where’s the cool helmet? The sleek breastplate? The practical, yet slightly intimidating pants? Why’s the female version made from a different material?

The issue isn’t as noticeable in the Envoy armor designs, but they still look off. The medium male design has a nicely detailed shirt, while the female one is just a bikini. It looks dumb, not sexy.

This is an issue with taste really. Male and female armors cannot be identical. Just look at phoenix armor. Most people agree that the male version is horrible, while the female version is great. In fact, female armors are generally better looking and more detailed. Just because one armor set ended up looking inferior for females, it’s not the end of the world.

Besides, the experimental envoy armor generally looks horrible, no matter the gender or the armor weight. What really ticks me off is that Anet spent dev time designing armor that was intentionally made to look bad, while armors are supposedly the most difficult skins to develop. It would have been much better if the experimental precursors were so badly made that they are unwearable. Then we would have 1 extra armor set, that actually looks decent, somewhere else in the game. I think that this tier of precursor armor was a waste of resources really.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Astralporing.1957:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

How is Legendary Armor a casual oriented item? "Casuals"couldnt care less about Meta changes, making stat swapping less beneficial towards them

It’s the opposite – casuals care less about finetuning the runes to their build, and so they can make greater use of stat swapping than hardcores.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

, the cost of Legendaries is a roadblock for most “casuals”.

Nope, just a long term goal. Yu can’t get them in day, a week, even a month, but if you really want it, you will eventually get it. Or at least it was like that for the past legendaries.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Pvp and FotM have special Legendary back pieces not obtainable anywhere else

yet, as you noticed, a legendary backpack has two different ways of acquisition. It’s only a skin that is exclusive.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Easy open world PvE has Legendary Weapons which aren’t obtainable if you don’t do open world PvE

Untrue. There was at least a handful of those given out as rewards for sPvP tournaments. Besides, map completion is a really low threshold to pass.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Raids will have Legendary Armor not obtainable anywhere else. From the very beginning of the game There has been items exclusive to specific game modes.

Raid is the first of such gamemodes that is in itself extremely exclusive. That is the problem.

Legendary Weapons are Exclusively blocked behind Open world PvE, there are no ifs, ands, or buts, about it, you must complete Map completion to acquire them normally otherwise you cannot get it. Now on the issue of the back pieces FoTM and PvP both have gates that most casuals will never get FoTM being an instances PvE content requires you to be able to complete FoTM 100 which has an actual Gear requirement or you will fail, sPvP has an actual time gate and skill requirement or you will never get it.

See every type of content minus WvW has gated Legendaries. open world PvE shouldn’t have access to every single type of legendary just because you want it. The game wants you to experience everything about it to give value/ meaning to what was made so they hate specific rewards to specific content.

This is shown by you must do X to receive Y… Simple concept of you don’t do X you don’t get Y.

Now I will use yours and Ohoni’s logic, I don’t like Open world PvE/ Map Completion but I want Incinerator because it’s shiny I can’t get it unless I do said contnent, I don’t want to do that content so Anet should make it so I get every single Poi, Vista, Heart, and WP for just entering each zone so I can acquire The pieces for Incinerator. Since it’s too much Work and hassle, and because I really hate Open World PvE to run around these huge maps completing the requirements to get map completion normally.

I can understand the argument to keep legendary acquisition difficult, but there is no reason to keep legendary armor stat-swapping gated behind raiding only. Legendary backpacks are not the only ones available from multiple game modes. You can obtain any legendary weapon type even if you don’t do map completion, because you can buy them off the tp. There are 4 legendary weapon skins exclusive in OWPvE, but they are just skins. If I want a staff for stat-swapping and can’t bother to grind OWPvE, I can just buy a Bifrost. Buying raid runs is not the same, because you still need time to find a group to carry you, a hinderance to casuals. In addition, it’s a transaction that is not completely secure, unlike the tp.

I’m not advocating for an easy mode raid to get legendary armor from. Alternate sets should be obtainable in completely different ways. In my opinion, the next set should come from WvW, because that game mode has no legendaries and because the stat swapping seems to be most useful for that mode of play. This is coming from someone who has barely stepped I to WvW.

This thread has devolved into too much arguing about easy modes and legendary armor. I keep seeing the same posters making the same points over and over again, on both sides.

Personally, I am of the belief that all legendary equipment types should eventually be available in every part of the game. Maybe in the next expansion we could get armor sets for WvW and fractals, backpacks for open-world PvE and weapons for raids and sPvP, for example. The problem is that so far Anet has been unable to keep up with legendary production, as evidenced by the discontinuation of the 2nd set of weapons.

I don’t believe that adding an easy mode of the raid and giving legendaries for it is the proper course. Of course, they could actually add an easy mode if they want more people to access the content. However, those would need to have new skins and items for rewards, which would also be aded to hard mode of course.

I say this as a player who has never stepped in a raid. I simply don’t have the time to even attempt them right now, even though I have 2 chars with full ascended gear. I am also in a very inconvenient time zone. Maybe I will eventually be able to try a raid, but only time will tell.

As for wether raids were a mistake… I’m not really sure. They seem to be intended for a small audience, so it depends on how many developer resourses they really take. I take Anet’s 5 dev statement with a grain of salt, because they stated that that is just the core raid team. They do in fact get assistance from other teams. What we don’t know is how much assistance is given to the raid team.

ozma.3498:

Mike O Brien.4613:

Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but how about the recent drought of content? That kind of thing happens when we spread ourselves too thin, and when we let the content development pipeline empty out so we can fight fires.

It’s not just recent – there has been no new content (besides HoT, which doesn’t count as it was paid for) since January 2015. The only new content since then is Heart of Thorns.

WoW: Warlords of Draenor: Shipped with 17 raid bosses (with 4 difficulty levels), 8 new dungeons (with 3 difficulty levels), 40+ full armor set skins (versus 3 in HoT), over 100 new weapon skins, 6 new full zones, and quite a lot of other stuff (mounts, pets, etc.). + a major patch 8 months later with 13 new raid bosses (again, with 4 difficulties each), a new dungeon difficulty level, a new zone…

HoT: 4 new zones, a short story campaign, elite specs, Revenant, guild halls, and that’s about it.

5 months later, there have been 5 out of 10 raid bosses released, no new dungeons, no new fractals, legendary skins planned but now cancelled at 4 out of 16, no living story, no legendary armor, 1 of 3 legendary backs actually available…

I’m not trying to be toxic, merely stating facts objectively. This really isn’t fair on people who purchased HoT.

And as for spreading yourselves too thin, it really leaves a sour taste in my mouth that new sets of weapon skins/armor sets/gliders/pets appear in the gem store like clockwork every couple of weeks. The development is always there when it comes to cash shop items. But people who paid for HoT are basically told to wait longer and longer to get the content that was advertised.

Please, don’t even bring Warlords of Draenor up, if you don’t know what you are talking about. There are plenty of reasons why that expansion was a massive flop. It certainly didn’t launch with 17 raid bosses. Highmaul was the first WoD raid, which was release about 1 month after WoD launch and had 7 bosses. BRF was supposed to be released straight after with 10 bosses, but was delayed for about 4 months iirc.
Certainly, WoW still released raid bosses quicker than GW2, but WoW is a raid-focused game.

In fact, there have been massive complaints that raids were the only meaningful content in WoD. I’m not even going to argue about most of the other points you posted about WoW, because it would take too much time. The only thing that I will say it that WoW armor sets aren’t dyable, which means that they release many recolors.

As for your gem store comment, I completely agree. The gem store does need content to keep the game alive, but there have been too many additions lately. Outfits and BL weapon skins are coming out so quickly, that they have reached a saturation point. The more work you put into outfits and weapon skins the less it pays off, because it makes people care less. People used to be excited to see what the ne BL weapons set would be, but now no one thinks they are special. I believe that some of the gem store artists should be moved to making actual skins that can be obtained in-game. That way we might get a decent amount of armor set by the end of HoT’s lifetime. Seriously, 3 sets is a pretty pitiful amount.

As for the legendaries, I never liked the grinding aspect of them and I have never completed one. Most of them don’t seem to be worth the effort, as the skins aren’t amazing imo. Maybe I’ll craft Nevermore, because that seems decent, but that is still only one legendary, out of all 22 currently available. I can understand how people feel misled, but in my opinion, focusing on content is the best thing Anet can do now. They always focus too much on massive collections and revamps. This definitely makes them look bad and untrustworthy, but I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and see if they have anything decent in April. It’s not like I have to pay a subscription to keep playing the game…

Mea.5491:

The “stretch” was lame because it “stretched” the textures around the armpit and it looked ugly. Not to mention the arm/head clipping issues… I’m actually glad it’s gone.

Unfortunately, that animation wasn’t the only one that was removed. Anet removed every single idle animation except the one where the character fiddles with her hair. Human females also used to have one animation where they kicked the ground in boredom, and there may have been more that I don’t remember.

As it is now, human females desperately need more idle animations, whether they are the old ones or completely new ones.

Surian.3946:

Please people stop pushing for shrinking effects on bosses. I don’t understand why so many people have an issue with these effects, it’s been like this for 3 years and we’ve all killed world bosses and are clearing raids- there is nothing to fix here. I really, really, like the scaling of effects on bosses as a guardian, I’m engulfing this creature in righteous fire and it is freaking beautiful.

Also keep in mind there’s 80 or so players sitting there blasting at a boss using magic- it should look like a firework show that’s a lot of power! For people with garbage computers let them turn off these effects, but let me keep mine.

If something truly needs to be fixed it is the scaling of these effects because they are the primary reason why people have trouble discerning what is going on. It also doesn’t really make sense immersion-wise for a blast to get bigger on large enemies. My fireballs should have the same blast every time. Why would the blast suddenly grow if my fireball was the same size to the one that I fired on a smaller enemy?

However, Anet could make options for the blast effects too. After all, options is what many people are asking for, and we shouldn’t forget that when shifting the blame for visual clutter to other sources.

I like the maps as well. My only major gripe is that all of the events are on the clock at the moment. I would really appreciate it if everything wasn’t on a strict timer. Silverwastes was pretty good because you could always find a map where you could do something no matter when you logged in. However, the meta-events themselves are massive and pretty entertaining. The mouth of Mordremoth is an especially unique fight by GW2’s standards.

The fix to chak eggs was pretty also nice, because before that I had never gotten one to drop. Only reclaimed metal plates seem to be a hassle now as far as currencies are concerned, but I will try to get some by cheesing the bags that are affected by magic

Also, I do like the difficulty of the mobs even though I understand that it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I can see where people who complain about the difficulty are coming from though, because the expansion brought no new maps for them at all.

Masteries are pretty well done in my opinion. Only the early ones are extremely important. Once I got some of the important ones I stopped caring much about them. Now I simply level them up as I try to accomplish other HoT-related stuff.

Finally, the elite specs that I have played so far are more fun to play than I expected, so they did a pretty good job there I guess. There are some flaws there but hopefully they will fix some in their next balance patch.

saturn.4810:

Blackmoon.6837:

also, inb4 someone shouts misogyny, patriarchy or whatever…

What do bikinis have to do with partiarchy? Are bikinis more prevalent in patriarchic cultures, or something?

It’s pretty funny that you mention it because bikinis are actually less prevalent in such cultures.

Different legendary armor skins should eventually be available outside of raids. That sort of content is not for everyone and it would be a shame if only a minority got access to armor with swappable stats.

The best way to implement this though would be in the second expansion. Simply make the 2nd gen legendary armor acquirable by other game modes while the 3rd gen legendary weapons are raid only. Swapping the new legendary rewards between game modes seems like the best long-term solution for me and it ensures that raiders still have unique legendary skins.

Outfits are way easier to make than armor sets. Not only are they a single piece where clipping issues don’t have to be considered at all, but they also don’t come in three different weights. Not to say that the lack of armor sets in HoT wasn’t disappointing, because it is one of the aspects of the expansion that majorly disappointed me. There should have been at least been 1 armor set for every new zone. In addition having full armor sets for every elite spec would have been a major treat and a good throwback to GW1 where there was profession-specific armor. Even if the new spec armors turned out to be wearable by other professions, it would still be nice to have these themed armors. I was also surprised that PvP didn’t get a new armor set, even though I don’t bother with that game mode at the moment.

Then there is also the issue with the old PvP armor sets which haven’t yet returned. They already exist and I don’t see why it’s taking them so long to figure out a way to bring them back. They are seriously content that requires little effort to put in the game.

My only gripes with the gem store is the large amount of recent weapon skins and the bundles. The post-HoT TP weapons are almost as many as the new in-game ones now and soon they will surpass them in amount. The bundles also force you to buy the entire thing just for one component, and even though I haven’t really wanted any of the new bundle outfits I can still understand the problem.

Wisper.2764:

So strange that they choose to put outfits like that Slayer one * which have a lot of uggly details * in my opinion < But a bikini, which is simple and could sell a lot they don’t. I mean.. let’s be honest here, everyone would buy at least one of them Kappa

I’d probably buy as many swimsuits as I can afford for both my male and female characters, I mean sword-master Faren also looks kinda dashing! This is of course assuming that they aren’t exclusively a part of bundles that come with a glider, a weapon skin, a total makeover kit and some dyes.

The only thing that I want for Christmas is the original skill and aura effects back.

Daralii.8940:

Ganathar.4956:

LovelyVirus.9432:

oshilator.4681:

The e-sports ship sailed on this game 3 years ago.

And Anet has yet to realize it.

These ‘visual noise reductions’ are just more proof.

Trying to make this game become a MOBA game . Good job Anet !
Look at League of Legends , each champion just have 4 skills , 1 passive and they have to blances them every patch by nerf , buff their skills or remake them as a new champion with new skills and passive . For GW2 , i can’t imagine how they can do it ….
Anet should focus on WvW , Event , contents , storyline …. in game than trying to make MMORPG become MOBA .

You are right, Esports are precisely that because they don’t have that many abilities, which makes both understanding them and watching them easier for viewers. No matter how much the visuals are toned down GW2 will never be an Esport because it is not simple enough. The visual clutter is merely a symptom of the complexity if the game. The balance patches are also not frequent enough.

I think that the devs should stop being so adamant about GW2 becoming an Esport and focus on the strengths of their game, instead of giving them up for a pipe dream.

So you’re saying they should remove skill slots 6 through 10? c:

I’m saying that they simply shouldn’t bother with Esports unless they are willing to make PvP completely different when compared to the rest of the game.

akalpurakh.9306:

Can’t wait for the one guy out of a million to show up that supports this garbage change, linking a picture of an Orr fight from 2013.

Such people also miss the point. The single biggest contributor of visual clutter is that the impact spells scales with enemy size.

Blessed.2198:

Yello.3406:

Sorry, if that was missleading. I am not sarcastic at all. I want them to roll back those changes asap! I would laugh hard if the whole fist page would only display complain-threats about this visual noise nonsence!

No worries! That would indeed be hilarious, maybe then we’d get a response on this issue, haha

Nope, they’d just merge the threads and pretend that nothing is happening.

Taigen Raine.8752:

I was actually on voice chat with friends the first time I used reaper 5 on an ogre champ. They were like “[Expletives deleted]!, You just totally froze that guy, that was so awesome! I can’t wait to get reaper form!” Sadly, now he never will get to have such an awesome experience because the devs seem dedicated to completely ruining the game.

I was hoping to escape the visual nerfs by playing other professions except my ele, but I should have known better. The entire game is getting these forced changes.

LovelyVirus.9432:

oshilator.4681:

The e-sports ship sailed on this game 3 years ago.

And Anet has yet to realize it.

These ‘visual noise reductions’ are just more proof.

Trying to make this game become a MOBA game . Good job Anet !
Look at League of Legends , each champion just have 4 skills , 1 passive and they have to blances them every patch by nerf , buff their skills or remake them as a new champion with new skills and passive . For GW2 , i can’t imagine how they can do it ….
Anet should focus on WvW , Event , contents , storyline …. in game than trying to make MMORPG become MOBA .

You are right, Esports are precisely that because they don’t have that many abilities, which makes both understanding them and watching them easier for viewers. No matter how much the visuals are toned down GW2 will never be an Esport because it is not simple enough. The visual clutter is merely a symptom of the complexity if the game. The balance patches are also not frequent enough.

I think that the devs should stop being so adamant about GW2 becoming an Esport and focus on the strengths of their game, instead of giving them up for a pipe dream.

RollFzzlbeef.4092:

Glenstorm.4059:

Flashy attacks are (were?) a big reason I picked Ele as my main. This was a horrible, and horribly POINTLESS, change.

What problem, exactly, did the visual nerfs fix?

-Bosses are not magically more visible now.
-Auras are LESS visible in team fights. Hooray, counterplay! /s
-Fireball looks like I’m chucking godkitten streamers at my enemy.
-What’s next? OOH can I have invisible Meteor Shower? Maybe THAT would actually be worth it, for the lulz if for nothing else.

Very discouraging. Time for a break from this game.

Engi’s got wrecked too, our explosions happen so fast you can barely see them, fields are kitten near invisible, and even our glorious flamethrower (may she rest in peace) has had it’s jet reduced along with the smoke screen, air blast and FT 2 glorious explosion. Hell even the grandaddy big ol bomb is about the explosion size of what bombs used to be now.

Believe me my ele comrade, engi’s feel your pain in it’s entirety

I don’t play much engi but it always bugs me when I can’t even see the flametrower shoot any fire during its auto, it happens about half of the time.

TexZero.7910:

Blessed.2198:

TexZero.7910:

Caro.2730:

I think they do not get that most of the player base don’t care about e-sports and just want to have fun with friends. And what is there to watch? All the beautiful animations are dying. There’s nothing to watch.

Take the tinfoil hat off for just 2 seconds…..

It’s not about e-Sports, it’s about creating a more dynamic and easier to read combat. This applies to Raids and future content where the mobs do more than just face tank you.

Carry on.

Then if a player cannot see, it is up to them to correct that and they can turn their own spell effects down. I have never before witnessed devs purposefully making graphics worse in their own game. If I like to play solo a majority of the time, why do I need reduced “visual noise?” (What an obnoxious term.) The answer is that I don’t. If I chose to do raids or anything else that requires a large number of players, I’d turn my settings down like I have done in the past with WoW, CoH, or the original GW. The developers need to recognize that this is hurting the game and will cause people to leave.

There is only so much turning down a player can do. Certain spell effects were just obnoxious and still persisted even if you turned your graphics down to potato.gif

A slider for the visual effects would be different to the graphics slider. The reason why you can’t turn the effects down enough in the options menu is because Anet never bothered to make the functionality.

Llethander.3972:

Yello.3406:

Your screenshot perfectly points out that Anet completely failed in their attempt to adress the problem. It is the impact-animations that also scale up on big enemies that cause the visual clutter.
Instead they nerfed the projectiles and ground effects which do not contribute to the issue. It does however decrease the gameplay experience in a very sad way.

I completely agree.

I posted in an Elementalist fireball complaint thread right after the first round of changes saying exactly that; it’s not the effect as it flies through the air that’s the problem, it’s the massive explosion effect that occurs when it hits enemies that scales in size with the overall size of the target that is. Ranger horn birds are a prime example of the underlying problem.

Yes, the primary issue is the scaling of ability impacts. Fireballs and especially auras have almost no contribution to the visual clutter. All that these changes accomplished was to make people angry, which could have easily been avoided if they were on an optional slider.

HappilyInsane.5840:

inb4 the game actually becomes S.A.B

Lots of players have been asking to get SAB back for a while now. Anet is only acting on a popular request from the GW2 playerbase. Now they are trying to make the entire game into a big SAB, it will be wonderful!

Blackhearted.1264:

Pretty soon they’re going to just remove all effects completely. We’ll have nothing but text based descriptions of the action.

Thanks for the good laugh.

They have been trying really hard to make me leave the game recently. I’m getting very tired of having all of the effects that I rolled my main for gutted.

Overload earth is also a big offender. I think that they should make that rock that you ride invisible, so that we can actually see all of the important stuff in combat. Then we will have elementalists standing on air! How cool would that be?

oshilator.4681:

Sunshine.5014:

The thing I want to remind people that even the PvP esport players didn’t request this Aura visual change either. I don’t even know where ANet get the idea from.

Please don’t blame PvP players on this.

+1

He’s right. Never once.

At this point it seems like Anet has no idea how to reduce visual clutter an they are just trying random changes without even thinking about them. With all of these invisible animations, elementalists will soon be the most OP class in PvP.

I see that there were more visual nerfs in the latest patch and Anet is still not responding to the growing amount of discontent regarding this topic. Fireball is still a mess and now auras are almost invisible. I’m not into the whole e-sports thing but I can’t imagine invisible shocking and magnetic auras being a good thing for competitive players either. The only visual changes that didn’t butcher the animations were the shout ones. They still look okay to me but I’d need a side by side comparison to be sure.

Whatever the case, I’m baffled that Anet hasn’t yet considered making these changes optional. Guild Wars 2 is a game where visual appearance and animations matter a lot and every time you interfere with the visuals the negative response becomes greater. You can see this in the general discussion section and in reddit, which has a thread about it with almost 500 upvotes already, which is more than twice as many as the reddit fireball thread that came with the previous patch. My point is that the players are getting sick and tired of this and that it will become a very major issue soon if a compromise is not found.

If I recall correctly, Anet has stated before that they are intending to bring back the old PvP armors, including the tribal armor. However, they did not specify when this would happen. Personally I believe that HoT would have been the perfect expansion for the return of the old armors.

HoT is an expansion that was focused a lot on changing features and because of this it seems that some content was cut a bit short. The amount of armor sets in HoT is pretty small and these old armors could have helped a little bit in that regard since there are many players who don’t have them. Also, tribal armor fits the jungle theme perfectly.

Maybe they will bring them back during LW3? I truly don’t know.

Carighan.6758:

So far we have:

• Orbital Strike looks completely wrong. The skill deals high damage but has one of the tiniest visual effects in the game, clearly marking it as unimportant when looking at it. Plus if any dev has ever played C&C, ask them whether they’d like the Ion Cannon to look like this. :P
• Chronomancer wells keep their ground art and the butterfly explosion at the end (good), but lost much of the pulses. Honestly these could be ok, but considering how damaging or fight-changing some of them are, again, the art doesn’t match the relative importance.
• Elementalist Fireball is just… sad.
• Elementalist Fireball affecting other skills is bogus. The FGS, an elite skill having one of the fanciest AA animations in the game, now looks like a pea shooter. Great.

All of them good points. Also, orbital strike and some of the mesmer wells aren’t the only impactful skills that were made much less visible. Overload air is a pretty powerful skill and is now very hard to see in some situations. The cloud used to help a lot with this.

Senario.2038:

It is strange to me when other classes have elites for every type of utility they have elementalist is left in the dark with Signets.

Actually, no profession has elites for every type of utility they have. Every profession is missing 1 healing skill and 2 elite skills atm.

Glacial.9516:

Nearly all elite skills need improvements, and not just for Elementalist. It just so happens that we don’t have a single Elite (imo) that would be an improvement over a utility in its place instead. In fact the only utility I wouldn’t take might be Glyph of Renewal, and that’s saying something because a lot of our utilities are considered underpowered as well.

What I’d like:

FGS – Reduced cd to at least 90s, maybe even 60s if the 2nd FGS is sacrificed (esp. if other conjures were reduced to 30).

Glyph – Elemental stays until death or cd reduced to 60s. Increased HP might be good but I find Earth Elemental survives quite well as is.

Tornado – I liked the suggestion of making it a ground targetable aoe. If it reflected projectiles that might be a usable option too.

Rebound – Damage inversion or invulnerability for a short time after saving would be fantastic.

New Elite:
Signet of Arcane.
Passive – 10% Boon duration.
Active – Recharge all attunements (60ish cd, 0.5-1ish activation).

Pretty good suggestion overall.

FGS – I really believe that conjure weapons need a rework in general. However, if that rework never happens it would still be nice to have a cooldown that is not absurd.

Glyph – The HP buff isn’t needed but it should be permanent. The necromancer flesh golem is just as good as any elemental and it lasts forever. This is one of the many examples that shows how weak elementalist elites are.

Tornado – This would be my dream come true. If tornado became ground target-able and at least destroyed projectiles, it would turn from a skill I never use to one of my most used elites.

Rebound – Invulnerability for 2 seconds or so after saving would probably make it a worthy elite. Though I do think that it also needs something more if it doesn’t save your target, a delayed aura doesn’t seem good at all. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what you could add for that.

Signet of Aracne – It would be a pretty good future addition for sure. I believe that tempest would find the best use for this. 10% boon duration is pretty nice since tempest can focus on boon support heavily. In addition, the instant attunement recharge works really well with overloads.

HaxTester.9816:

This was reported 3 or 4 days ago, what do you expect, instant results? Pay them 1 million dollars so they can hire several programmers and animators to do the job in one day.

This may be a work in progress. They may be toning down the kittening annoying, screen cluttering visual effects and deploying them bit by bit. They may also be working on an option for certain players to retain the old visual effects.

Maybe they are working on the option to tone down the visual effects or maybe they are not. However, they haven’t stated that they are working on such an option, so until they do so it is good to remind them that it is something that they should do.

So I discovered that the modified fireball animation also applies to the fiery greatsword and any other bundle that used the original fireball animation. This makes for many more of those awesome immersion-breaking moments. I thought that I could escape this horrible animation by not playing my elementalist, but I still see it way too often.

On the bright side eles are now the best tennis players in Tyria. They use a greatsword as a tennis racket. Who else can do that?

roelvanesch.2817:

LOL I never use staff, just saw it… Its pathetic :’) I feel like fire staff ele is nerfed to the ground

It also seems to apply to fiery greatsword and any other skills that mobs or bundles use with the base fireball animation. This has resulted in many more immersion-breaking moments across the entire game, even when I’m not playing my elementalist.

Looks like eles are the best tennis players in Tyria now. They can use a greatsword as a tennis racket. Who else can do that?

Necrotic.7820:

Two pages of responses is hardly enough for anyone on the dev team to even notice, let alone bring to anyone else’s attention. I wonder how Ruby feels about it.

It’s enough to make them notice, just look at some other threads that have developer responses in their first page. The issue is not if they will notice. The issue is if they will do anything about it

Drawing Guy.3701:

Personally I find this to “clutter” change to be a step backwards. The only time that visual effects affected me was small world bosses (such as Dwayna or Modniir). PvP even with a 5v5 fight I never have had an issue. Simply making small world bosses a bit bigger so their tells stand out above the affects of 100 players would solve that issue for me.

What I think they need to do is to add this as an option. People that want smaller/less visual affects, but don’t want to turn them off can select the option. Just under “Effect LOD” add “Smaller Effects” where the tooltip can note that it lessens the ‘clutter’. And let those of us that enjoy the flashiness of GW2 have it back!

Those aren’t the only problems. Player skills can cause clutter on some larger bosses. However, player skills usually cause clutter because their impact on a large enemy scales with the size of the said enemy. It’s ridiculous how the impact of my fireball grows enormous and how the ranger eagles become the size the ones from Lord of the Rings.

These should be the priority to fix in regards to visual clutter. The size of the fireball and the cloud of overload air are insignificant in comparison and cause the skills to be almost invisible until impact, which makes it feel like you are doing nothing and that the impacts come out of nowhere.

Ariurotl.3718:

What’s with people using JPs as an example, as if they give a ton of points. It’s only Hidden Garden and the Wastes JPs that give them, IIRC.

I’d actually like it if more JPs (and some Explorer achievs) gave Mastery points. I mean, even Not So Secret doesn’t give you one.

Not so secret is a requirement for the dive master achievement, which gives a mastery point.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The “only walk around soloing random enemies” crowd isn’t a crowd. You don’t do that. You do events, or you’re next to other players, or other players will be around after you have left. The only time you’re ever alone is when you’re in an instance.

There’s quite a few problems with just having an optional slider. You could forget to turn it down. Other players will refuse to turn it down. Other players won’t be aware that it is an option at all.

Also, I never said I didn’t notice changes from the recent patch. You’re literally bring that accusation out of nowhere.

Sorry if I sounded accusative, I misinterpreted your first paragraph. In my opinion, plenty of players are capable of remembering to change the settings. I change them all the time and if you want you can keep the particle effects to the minimum at all times.

However, if you still believe that an option would cause problems there is a solution. Simply make a hotkey toggle for minimum and maximum particle effects just like we have for the action combat. Now some players may still not be aware of the option, but most of the content isn’t tuned to the level that requires it.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Having a slider which scales up visual effects is the same as having a slider which scales up how badly you’ll play.

And why exactly do I care about that when I’m soloing random mobs in Verdant Brink? If I go into challenging content I can adjust the settings. Also, if you really can’t see a difference in visual clutter after the patch, it means that Anet failed and that their changes were pointless.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Personally I don’t give a darn about my skills looking impressive. I want to be able to see what my enemy is doing, and I am tired of not being able to do just that.

That’s great and all, but many people do care about visuals and with all these changes the professions are becoming more and more bland-looking. Fireball was one of the primary reasons why I initially got my ele to 80 before any of my other characters. It just used to feel awesome when you threw those impact balls of fire.

No matter what you prefer, there is no reason to not at least support the notion that all of this effect culling should be an optional thing for whoever wants it. If it becomes optional, Anet can cull effects from every single ability without any complaints whatsoever. This is a win-win situation, right?

Would be nice to get an official response explaining to us why making this effect culling optional would hurt the game. I really want to know.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Why didn’t they just make it turn-offable in the settings?

I honestly have no clue as to why. The idea seems so obvious and many other games do it. Why would you force the change on everyone and in every situation? Now my ele’s fireball is ruined, alongside plenty of other animations. I just noticed the amazing job that they did on the engineer flamethrower auto as well. I can’t see it most of the time even when I’m alone.

This is all just very depressing and it really discourages me from playing my ele. Fireball is the animation I see the most and every time I see it, I get reminded that one of my favorite skill effects was turned into one of the worst in the game.

I never noticed the effects of this, but I have only recently begun to seriously play around with my engineer. In any case, I am an advocate for this effect culling to be optional. If you go into a competitive environment and want to see things more clearly you should turn on effect culling. If you just want to kill some easy mobs while looking visually impressive you shouldn’t have to deal with culled animations.

If you guys want to support effect culling to be optional keep posting and show your interest to the devs. There is also a dedicated thread in the general section https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Visual-nerfs-Merged

Gutek.1534:

I feel like a carnival entertainer now not a master of the elements…..

That’s a pretty god way to put it. I guess it’s a good time to shelf my elementalist for a while. Maybe I should get some of my alts up to speed.

Senario.2038:

Fire(tennis) ball. I don’t see why this isn’t just an option if you want to turn your graphics all the way down. Other games do it where you can reduce particle effects down based on what your computer can handle. Why not GW2? I don’t have a good gaming pc in order to have less visual effects when my game handles everything at the highest setting or near highest setting very well. Let it be an option then I wouldn’t be displeased with it, other games have less particle effects as an OPTION not as a requirement.

It’s not about graphics, it’s mostly about reducing the visual clutter that happens in group content. However, it should still be optional. Not all players care about maximum performance in raids or other content. Even if they do care about it, I still doubt that they would want to be throwing flaming tennis balls to trivial open world PvE mobs.

These visual changes would be fine if they were optional. As an elementalist main I really hate what happened to fireball and overload air. I don’t know what exactly happened to wells, but if the changes that I have seen to my ele main are anyrthing to go by, it is probably horrible. If you guys really want to see something changed, post in the Visual nerfs thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Visual-nerfs-Merged/first

Both fireball and overload air were completely gutted. Fireball used to be one of my favorite skills visually and now it makes me cringe every time I play. Not only is it tiny, but it doesn’t match the rest of the staff skills and it doesn’t even match the windup of the auto itself. It just looks very out of place.

Overload air now has no cloud, which makes it barely visible and only if you are looking for it. For such a damaging skill, you would think that it would be very visible, so people in PvP know where the damage is coming from. Also, the lightning now comes out of nowhere, at least with the cloud it made sense.

These changes are seriously making me avoid playing my elementalist. I am sure that many mesmers also feel the same for their now bland wells, but I don’t have a mesmer so what do I know?

Can we get an option to disable this stuff? It is not needed for most of the game, just make it an option for people to use in extremely competitive environments. I don’t want to see my ele throw flaming tennis balls when facing random mobs in Queensdale.