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For the love of the six, stop with the flashing effects


Aerlen.5326

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kharmin, I literally can disable your legendary armour look. My question is not whether it is a valid argument in a vacuum or not.

My question is why this is even an argument when I can make everything generic and all I see is generic particles from no one in particular.

Also, the legendary auras and such are NOT the problem for the majority of photosensitive people. White strob / eclectic strob is.

If your argument had actual hold in Anet's vision, we'd never have the ability to disable people's looks. We can and even NPCs look flashier in that situation.

Cheers!

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Iirc, a dev posted on one of the threads complaining about particle spam specifically to comment on an effects slider. The comment was, essentially, that designing a slider in would have had to have been done back when the game was in initial design. That re-engineering the engine to allow for a slider would be a prohibitive amount of work and would likely have unintended consequences. What that suggests to me is that their subsequent attempts to address particle overload have been less effective because they are working within the constraints imposed by their initial design choices.

To me, it seems like a curious design choice to one one hand say that, "We want players to focus on what's happening on screen (rather than on the UI)." while also making it as difficult as possible to see what's going on. I also want a way to drastically lower or even eliminate the massive particle blur anytime more than a very small number of players attack a mob. However, I have given up at this point. ANet has made adjustments to these effects, though the results have had minimal effect as far as I am concerned. If I remember that (old forum) post correctly, then a more drastic reduction option is extremely unlikely -- more's the pity.

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The things is, we don’t even need a slider. Game engine is not the cause of this issue, nor the reason it can’t be fixed. Anet can go back and redo the flashes so that they’re not bright instant camera flashes that are hazardous to health. Anet just simply refuse to do it. Look at all the cool visual effects in games out there. Not only do you not need bright instant flashes to make a game’s effects look good, but the good looking visual effects are artistic and creative effects, not mere bright instant flashes.

I used to work at a certain infamous game company that just wanted to rush buggy games out the door. However, even this company took bright instant flashes seriously and changed visual effects if any were flagged by a single QA tester as possible health issues. The reason? If one tester is bothered by a flash, there will be thousands of customers who will also be affected by it.

Anet really needs to have their QA team check out all the weapon skills and utility skills, and report the ones that are causing bright instant flashes. Then the devs should change these effects so that they’re not unhealthy bright instant flashes. This would be an excellent start. I’m sure a lot of players can make do with things like gathering tools causing flashes for now, since we do not need to look at the monitor while gathering. But a player’s own skills causing such bright instant flashes (made even worse in a group), when the player needs to look at the action going on, needs to be fixed ASAP.

Again, we’re not saying remove beautiful visual effects. We’re saying change them in ways that are not hazardous to players’ health.

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@kharmin.7683 said:ANet is going to market and produce a game that will capture the largest margin of their target audience according to the statistics that only they have. Forums typically represent a very small portion of the entire player-base. It seems to me that ANet knows that they will gain more revenue with flashy effects that will attract the most players in their targeted demographic. I won't go so far as to say that they don't care if some players have health issues that may be impacted by this decision (and others -- search the forums for the spider phobia threads); however, at the end of the day they will market/produce a product that will be the most profitable.

Sorry, but I believe that flashy effects are here to stay.

These effects are ways for players to show off, and if ANet implements a feature that allows players to disable the effect, then the perceived value of these items is significantly lowered. This lowering of perceived value might discourage players from spending time/money going after items that produce these effects which will impact ANet's bottom line.

And the bottom line is really what is important here.

It is just an option that many games have to increase performance. It is already to some extent in the game where you can disable all the fancy skins.The skins are not the problem. I don't have an issue with any skin, wardrobe part. The biggest problem are the skill animation and their scaling with enemy size. The generic ones that are available to anyone. When in a big train you literary do not see anything but strobs and flashes. My screen is fully covered with generic strobs, my performance drops to few frames per second and I can not see enemy designs, player designs and their flashy armor, their legendary animations.If anything this option would enable me to actually see those fancy legendaries, now I can't even see players. I am just tab targeting until I target the desired mob. And than if I am melee I try to look for the dmg numbers to see if I am in range because I definitely can't see my player model.I literary do not know how some bounties look like because they have smaller models and I have only done them in big trains.

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@Dante.1763 said:

@"ReV.6097" said:... and ANet not listening to us half the time,...You have no proof of that.

I believe hes referring to the "not responding to threads" half the time

This.And even if they read and get the point people are bringing up, there's no guarentee their higher-ups will take it into consideration unless it becomes a big deal.

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  • 1 month later...

@Mercster.2147 said:I am prone to seizures, I just started this game...but this thread does not bode well.

I can't comment on anything that may or may not trigger for yourself, but this game is generally getting worse for it and the latest episode starts with an instance which is all flashing effects. The problem is Anet have been unable to address the issue at a technical level so far, which I can understand, but have continued to compound the issue with more and more items that stack the flashing and the particle effects. It would be mean for me to outright suggest they just simply don't care, but if they can't deal with the issue on a technical basis, they should never have kept (seemingly) wrecklessly adding more items and environs that do flash constantly or at least be more careful about it.

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Has anyone considered that Anet may be unable to fix this problem or indeed many of the major bugs that have existed in the game for long periods of time, simply because the programmers who originally created the content are no longer with Anet, and now, no one knows how to fix the problems?

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Video games are literally light shows of color and flashing on a screen. The vast majority of people complaining are people who either just don't like flashy effects or are simply looking for secondary gains and not true epileptics. Anyone with an actual medical diagnosis of epileptic seizures wouldn't be submitting themselves to bright flashy video games to begin with. It would be like a quadriplegic deciding to go for a swim.

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@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:Video games are literally light shows of color and flashing on a screen. The vast majority of people complaining are people who either just don't like flashy effects or are simply looking for secondary gains and not true epileptics. Anyone with an actual medical diagnosis of epileptic seizures wouldn't be submitting themselves to bright flashy video games to begin with. It would be like a quadriplegic deciding to go for a swim.

This is the most uninformed post I have seen in a while.

I have been playing games for over 35 years. There are games that give me very painful headaches due to photosensitivity and there are that does nothing to me. I also have been going on stage for over 20 years. We have our own lighting technician due to my photosensitive migraines. Some strobs really hurt me even when directed at the audience.

This game, in 90% of its content, is fine. Some effects, some cutscenes, some combinations though - knock me down real bad.

And there are actual ways to reduce stress on the photosensitive folks. Some games employ them, and even then, since you cannot account for ALL levels of photosensitivity, they give you a warning. I usually don't risk it if it isn't a title I've been waiting for a long time.

So, yeah, whatever you say. We're quadriplegics trying to swim.

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The flashing isn't an issue for just people with photosensitivity; it's a real health problem for everybody. Nobody has eyes that are immune to fatigue, wear and tear, and damages. Eventually, your eyes are going to get worse due to all the flashes in this game. I see a lot of people make these mistakes, time and time again. It never occurs to people how unhealthy something is until the damage is already done and THEN they regret it and start to make adjustments when it's already too late. I'm one of those people. 10 years ago, these flashing lights wouldn't have bothered me, but now, my eyes have gotten bad and all these bright camera flashes hurt my eyes.

As much as I'm enjoying this game, I wouldn't have started if I knew about these flashing effects. Heck, I couldn't even get my friends into this game after they saw the flashing effects. There's literally no benefit to having these unhealthy flashing effects. There are plenty of ways to make visual effects that look great and a spam of camera flashes is not one of them.

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@"Witch of Doom.5739" said:I cannot get through this latest episode, get a headache after only a few minutes. Any suggestions (graphics settings, etc.) for turning down the flashing effects? In some spots I can't even see my allies it's so overwhelming. Thank you in advance.

I haven't done this mission, but there are some settings that help a little.

Postprocessing to "none" will reduce the brightness/intensity of lights. While it doesn't remove the flashes themselves, it still helps. The only drawback is that it affects not only the bright flashes and lights, it changes the entire game's atmosphere.

Effect LOD checked on supposedly does something. I honestly can't tell the difference between this on and off.

For me, the biggest help was turning my monitor's brightness way down for this game. It's very inconvenient since I have to adjust it constantly depending on time of day and game I'm playing, but the alternative is more eye pain (which is dangerous long term) or not playing a game I spent hundreds of dollars on.

You may also want to look into the spec and weapon you're using. Some specs and weapons cause flashing lights (such as Holosmith skills).

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@Shivvies.3921 said:

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:Video games are literally light shows of color and flashing on a screen. The vast majority of people complaining are people who either just don't like flashy effects or are simply looking for secondary gains and not true epileptics. Anyone with an actual medical diagnosis of epileptic seizures wouldn't be submitting themselves to bright flashy video games to begin with. It would be like a quadriplegic deciding to go for a swim.

This is the most uninformed post I have seen in a while.

I have been playing games for over 35 years. There are games that give me very painful headaches due to photosensitivity and there are that does nothing to me. I also have been going on stage for over 20 years. We have our own lighting technician due to my photosensitive migraines. Some strobs really hurt me even when directed at the audience.

This game, in 90% of its content, is fine. Some effects, some cutscenes, some combinations though - knock me down real bad.

And there are actual ways to reduce stress on the photosensitive folks. Some games employ them, and even then, since you cannot account for ALL levels of photosensitivity, they give you a warning. I usually don't risk it if it isn't a title I've been waiting for a long time.

So, yeah, whatever you say. We're quadriplegics trying to swim.

i have a curved screen and blue light protection in my glasses because of migraines, it seriously helps reduce the stress on my eyes.maybe a suggestion?

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@"Yuyuske.7182" said:tumblr_nuex8idqzu1us2u89o1_540.png

"When she lifts her hand you have to dodge""How am I supposed to see her lift her hand!?"

HAHA! yeah the dogpile is a problem in all games you cant see kitten when everyone starts popping cds esp. In all games i have played you could always turn down or off particle effects, its odd you cant in GW.

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