The Officially Unofficial Weekly Discussion #76: Do you like or dislike the amount of power graphics?

[DougGraves]

FF makes clear bubbles.  Thermal coats people in fire.

 

And there are a lot of aoe explosions, areas of effect, etc.

 

At higher levels the screen can be so full of effects it is hard to see any of the people.

 

Do you like seeing all of the powers - giving the game a super feel?  Do you want to see the costumes more?  Is there a level where the amount of powers effects feels super but manageable?

[WumpusRat]

I generally try to minimize the intrusiveness of power effects as much as possible. Setting some powers to "dark" and then choosing the lightest possible colors to make them translucent, setting armor toggles to minimal fx (or nofx if possible), etc.

 

For things like attacks, I'm fine with leaving them as default or coloring them to fit the character's motif, but for stuff that gets toggled on or thrown on other people, I want to make it as minimal as I can. Having someone throw neon-green ice and fire shields on you so all you can see is a blob of color running around as you're fighting is annoying. 🙂

[Oubliette_Red]

22 minutes ago, WumpusRat said:

I generally try to minimize the intrusiveness of power effects as much as possible. Setting some powers to "dark" and then choosing the lightest possible colors to make them translucent, setting armor toggles to minimal fx (or nofx if possible), etc.

 

For things like attacks, I'm fine with leaving them as default or coloring them to fit the character's motif, but for stuff that gets toggled on or thrown on other people, I want to make it as minimal as I can. Having someone throw neon-green ice and fire shields on you so all you can see is a blob of color running around as you're fighting is annoying. 🙂

 

I do something similar, though using the dark theme seems to always have that inky, blackness no matter what. I tend to chose the light theme and go for the left-most columns as they seem to be less saturated and not as noticeable.

[UltraAlt]

2 hours ago, DougGraves said:

Do you like seeing all of the powers - giving the game a super feel?

 

I like seeing the powers go off, but when I'm playing at higher levels or on a large team I often have to turn the VFX off so that I can see what is going in.

 

2 hours ago, DougGraves said:

Do you want to see the costumes more?

 

I like seeing people's costumes. I don't mind the forcefield, fire shields or ice shield - unless they are all while and then I turn the VFX of to minimize the blinding spam as much as possible.

 

2 hours ago, DougGraves said:

Is there a level where the amount of powers effects feels super but manageable?

 

In most cases I'm okay up into the 30's, but even that doesn't save me for multiple reasons.

It might just be the mix of power picks. It might be because there are level 50's on the team.

It might b because someone at a low level picks all white VFX. I have no idea why anyone would do that other than to punish their teammates.

[Snarky]

I love the graphics.  I wish we had more options to switch animations or recolor.  The rainbow on a VILLAIN archetype Dom’s domination power or Dark build up on Dom makes it unplayable for me.  But in general I think the overall effects are very thematic and appropriate.  When the Devs took their head out and looked around providing the appropriate animation for the AT Powerset it is perfect

 

Having said that…. The game was never designed for Leagues and barely for large teams.  Once you get 8+ players firing off effects and mobs doing their things, then 24…48 players and damage patches (you can see it right? We put in a blue hazy color on the floor to warn you…). The flaws in upscaling the population in a fight become super obvious.  
 

I do not have an easy solution suggestion.  A complicated one would be a pop up menu looking something like:

 

Suppress Personal effect: yes/no

Suppress League effects: y/n

Suppress Team effects: y/n

Suppress non player interacting effects: (this one would kill any mob SFX that was not somehow affecting your own character in some way.).  

[PeregrineFalcon]

I like the effects. And I miss the original glow of Invulnerability.

[WumpusRat]

7 hours ago, Oubliette_Red said:

 

I do something similar, though using the dark theme seems to always have that inky, blackness no matter what. I tend to chose the light theme and go for the left-most columns as they seem to be less saturated and not as noticeable.

Yeah, depends a lot on the power in question. Sometimes the dark setting with light colors doesn't work right, and light setting with dark colors does. 

I just wish there was a "nofx" option for every power, just to give more choices.

[Sanguinesun]

10 hours ago, Snarky said:

I love the graphics.  I wish we had more options to switch animations or recolor.  The rainbow on a VILLAIN archetype Dom’s domination power or Dark build up on Dom makes it unplayable for me.  But in general I think the overall effects are very thematic and appropriate.  When the Devs took their head out and looked around providing the appropriate animation for the AT Powerset it is perfect

 

Having said that…. The game was never designed for Leagues and barely for large teams.  Once you get 8+ players firing off effects and mobs doing their things, then 24…48 players and damage patches (you can see it right? We put in a blue hazy color on the floor to warn you…). The flaws in upscaling the population in a fight become super obvious.  
 

I do not have an easy solution suggestion.  A complicated one would be a pop up menu looking something like:

 

Suppress Personal effect: yes/no

Suppress League effects: y/n

Suppress Team effects: y/n

Suppress non player interacting effects: (this one would kill any mob SFX that was not somehow affecting your own character in some way.).  

 

 

There really isnt an answer to be had as you pointed out because its just part of the continued feature creep of the game and would require either vast unpopular changes of supression being impossed on everyone graphically in large group situations, and or a complete rehaul of the game with a new engine etc.   At least to a certain extent, comps capabilities over time have increased to accommodate handling some of the stability sides of this hardware wise.  

 

But with suppression of effects comes the other side of it: not knowing if affects are applied as the the visual cues were one of the intentions when originally implemented.  It'd basically turn fights into mall flash mob interpretive mime dances only hehe.

Edited May 10 by Sanguinesun

[Greycat]

I don't generally mind. THe only time it really gets to be "a lot" is in - say - an MSR or an invasion, and I have bigger things to worry about at that point.

 

Honestly I've never really gotten the "I can't see my character" thing... outside of a mission or when you're not fighting? Sure. Middle of  a fight? What, you want to make sure you're a pretty corpse? But... *shrug* no skin off my nose.

[cranebump]

It can be a bit much, but you get used to it on regular teams. For Zone events and such I just accept that I'm not going to see much of anything clearly and go with it. 

 

What actually does bug me is when people have their shinies on next to trainers for extended periods. I sometimes wish we had a power suppression zone around the area. Those instances are pretty rare, however. 

[SeraphimKensai]

I personally play of max graphics/ultra mode. My wife who doesn't play saw me doing a Hami raid and asked "how the hell do you even know what's going on?", to which I replied "I've got 20 years experience learning all the animations.

 

I do agree though with @Snarky that all powers should get options for recoloring, because limiting the color choices on animations can really mess with someone's concept of character.

[Techwright]

League (especially MSR's bowl fighting) and invasion events get out of hand visually.   I've no idea how new players figure out the playing field in a white-out of color and light.  I've 2 decades experience to fall back on and even that is not enough at times.  It sounds like some of the other responders have found ways to turn down league effects graphics.  I've asked this a few times over the years, and never got a successful response.  So if there is an effective way, I'd be delighted to hear it.  I'd be fine if there was a control to reduce by percentage: 75%, 50%, 25%.  I'd be happy to still see something of effects, but in a fight, I want to see the characters first.

 

Old players like me will remember the halcyon days when color choice was added to many powers. Or perhaps I should say "headache" rather than "halcyon".  Hordes of players immediately went to the brightest, boldest colors they could find for everything, and had no understanding of the use of subtlety in color.  As a result, there were a lot of complaints of headaches among other players.  I recall having to sadly exit the game on several occasions when I physically could no longer take the visual strain.  Fortunately, the player base finally realized the darker colors had benefit as well.

 

The OP mentioned bubbles.  I've a couple of bubblers, and realized pretty quickly that darker colors were the better route with them.  Showing just enough for another player to realize there's some shielding at play, without blocking his/her view, is how I roll.

[Frostbiter]

The brightest on all powers could stand to be turned down a notch or two. My monitor is already turned down on brightness and they still hurt to look at.