Turning Off Other Players' Ability Effects NEEDS to be a Priority

[Whiskers.7346]

I'm sure there have been threads about this in the past. But the fact that nothing has been done yet demonstrates that it needs to be brought up again.

 

We need to be able to turn off other players' ability effects in combat. Arenanet, you must figure out a way to do this. You are competing with a lot of much cleaner-looking online games like Final Fantasy XIV, and even Lost Ark. Every time I have tried to pull in friends to play GW2, I've run into the same issue. They can't tell what the heck is going on. If I run a meta event, they can't see the boss. If I run a strike, they STILL can't see the boss. Making the boss models larger truly is not good enough. I need to be able to turn off all the fireballs, wells, bubbles, citadel bombardments, all the ability casts that are not my own. Effect LOD is not even close to a solution. It's just not good enough, and it never will be good enough.

 

We must be able to turn these effects off.

 

I, like many people here, have played this game for years. All of us have more or less put up with the visual noise in this game, and we do so because the game is pretty fun to play. But bringing new players into this game in 2022, with how clean and crisp every other online game looks these days (for the most part), is extremely difficult. Not only would this serve to increase everyone's framerates, it would also clean the game up drastically so that we can see ourselves, and see the thing that we're fighting.

 

Right now, anyone who looks into this game's endgame sees nothing but a blazing star in the middle of the screen. Arenanet, you need to find it in you to change this. No one can enjoy the gorgeous maps you've developed, or the cinematic boss fights you've put time into, if everyone's screen is full of nothing but nameplates and explosions.

 

Please prioritize this. 

TL:DR - Ability effects from other players makes it so hard to see what's going on in this game, it's almost impossible for me to bring any of my friends over to play it when they can just play cleaner-looking games like FFIXV or Lost Ark.

[Mad Maxxie.6075]

Just got back into the game and I feel 100% the same. It's awful, I did the big meta event for Bjora Marches and the one in Drizzlewood yeaterday and you literally can't see anything, the boss telegraphs are completely obscured and the huge overload of effects also makes the lag insane on top of it. I know combos are a thing but I'll take actually being able to see and understand mechanics and not pushing my computer to sound like a jet turbine over seeing combo fields that all overlap anyway, any day of the week. FF14 let's you at least not see all visuals that aren't beneficial effects and you can't combo like 20 combo fields at once anyway so maybe make just the top ones visible or just let us remove them if we don't care because it's WAY too much. It's not fun or engaging to fight a boss when you can't see anything and it drops to 2 frames a minute.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

This issue has been a pet peeve of mine for ~10 years.

 

That said, I seem to recall that on the old forums an ANet dev stated that to put in an effects slider would have been very doable when the game was being engineered from the ground up.  However, putting something like that in "now" would be very problematic.

 

More's the pity.

[Cuks.8241]

They can surely disable infusions and other cosmetic effects. Also simple nameplates like we have in wvw. It would be a great start. 

[Linken.6345]

10 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

They can surely disable infusions and other cosmetic effects. Also simple nameplates like we have in wvw. It would be a great start. 

Woot and not let people show of the infusion/legendary  effects people would riot.

[Cuks.8241]

53 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Woot and not let people show of the infusion/legendary  effects people would riot.

That shouldnt be an issue based on many different games out there. Having standard models, and ability to adjust, disable different effects is more of a standard feature since the dawn of multiplayer gaming than an exception.

[Duglaive.5236]

1 hour ago, Linken.6345 said:

Woot and not let people show of the infusion/legendary  effects people would riot.

Perhaps Anet should seriously consider an actual Fashion Wars game, and save the eyesight and sanity of those of us who play for more ... "mundane" reasons 🤔

[babak.3654]

Yes, wholeheartedly agree. It's a complete mess any time players are attacking the same target. I swear half the difficulty in encounters comes from not being able to see what the boss is doing, or even which direction it's facing sometimes. 

[babak.3654]

1 hour ago, Linken.6345 said:

Woot and not let people show of the infusion/legendary  effects people would riot.

Let them. Your character appearance is really there to please yourself, after all.

 

If I can't even see what is happening in a fight, I'm definitely not able to check out all the shades of their legendary vomit.

[ArchonWing.9480]

Yea, it doesn't help that sometimes people would put some annoying combos to harass people by blocking their vision.

Needless to say I'm quite a fan of the standard enemy models in PvP and WvW.

And it is a good option in Lost Ark, since that game rivals this one when it comes to clutter.

[eyestrain.3056]

The option to turn off other player's mount, glider and backpack skins without going full scorched earth lowest player model settings would be so tremendously appreciated. I love seeing people's fashion, there's just a time and a place right?

Skyscales in particular create an enormous amount of screen clutter during big group events when moving from area to area, but the amount of flickering and sparkling backpacks etc can also be hard on the eyes and brain even when just standing in a crowded area.

[DexterousGecko.6328]

I'm sure the argument is "Why would they do that? People should be forced to see everyone's cosmetic effects to encourage more transactions." but I have my doubts how many people that are the type to actively search for and disable the option to show other player cosmetics would be purchasing cosmetics based on seeing them on someone else.

 

But, the "if it doesn't make them more money, it's pointless" will always show up regardless.

[Plok.5873]

Supported for the virtually 100th time since launch. This game needs much less irrelevant visual noise to allow us to better read the relevant information, like skill animations.

The same is true for the GUI, the icons for profession abilities, boons + conditions are too small, the text even smaller. Due to the animation, fast auto-attack chain icons are barely readable with quickness. Etc etc. Related thread on reddit here.

[Doggie.3184]

FFXIV has these things at varying intensities and I'd love them here:

-Hide other player effects (people outside party).

-Hide party member effect.

Would also be nice to have

-Hide combo fields (bonus if we can toggle what kind)

-Hide unuseable combo fields o.o (ones covered by others). It would be more technical but I honestly wish the game already did this by default.

I don't care too much about cosmetics other than people who use super bright infusions to become a blinding migraine on purpose so a hide infusions would be nice. More-so if it was case by case and I could right click someone's health bar and [disable infusions] or maybe even a generic colors toggle on there too which would fix people afraid of someone dying Jade Mech and mounts ultra-bright. This is really the only MMO I've seen that allows people to achieve such intensely bright character effects. 

I believe Jade Mechs should 100% absolutely be dyeable to make up for not having a gigantic grid of pet choices like Ranger. Especially when we need to be near them for buffs and have to pick them outa crowd~~~which will be a much more annoying problem if Anet adds the 50% stat debuff if out of radius and don't give us a short-leash toggle command..... I'll honestly be angry. Don't do a nerf like that if you're not gonna add improved QoL options to support it.

8 hours ago, DexterousGecko.6328 said:

I'm sure the argument is "Why would they do that? People should be forced to see everyone's cosmetic effects to encourage more transactions." but I have my doubts how many people that are the type to actively search for and disable the option to show other player cosmetics would be purchasing cosmetics based on seeing them on someone else.

 

But, the "if it doesn't make them more money, it's pointless" will always show up regardless.

Heh, in PSO2 for example if someone had something I disliked attached I could click their character and disable all their attachments (useful for censoring gigantic hyper size Z breast attachments o.o)... and cosmetics are basically that game's only content, lol. If they can somehow survive I'm sure Anet can.

Edited November 19, 2022 by Doggie.3184

[kleisthenes.6247]

WvW is pretty much unplayable for me in the big fights, due to senssory overload. Which is strange, because it is normally not an issue for me, but only in GW 2.