What happend to the visual effects?

[Eva.3629]

As the title states, back in the days gw2 had more appealing visual efects, at that time. Now with the new expansion out it feels like every aspect of visuals its just either cheap and unispired, or recicled (obsidian armor or visual efects for some weapons of elite specialisation - riffle that shoots arrows :)), chunky pistol on ele).

Even in term of character customisation, there were no new faces or hairstyles!? not to say that the whole character creation needs a revamp, some looks pixelated and old textured. For a game that doesn t have any vertical progresion, and it has so many armor apearances, races and such, it feels weird that when we get an expansion, not even the weapon effects deliver, thinking that they announce that verry early before releasing the expansion.

[Jin.8501]

Costs money and they now have to recycle since EoD. PoF was the last time they made new animations and models

[Omega.6801]

What's been bothering me the most is the shift in weapon design since EoD. Ever since EoD weapon models have become more and more clunky and toy like, the models look bigger and more like something you'd see in WoW than in GW2.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

I would love some more elegant weapon choices. Rifles that look like rifles. Pistols that look believable. Realistic sized swords, greatswords. Elegant rapiers, flexible florets, hefty sabres.

But we got magical-toy-clunky-crap weapons instead. So tiring. So tiring.

Also new hairstyles! New cultural armor! Give me something to work for that looks nice and thematic! Not some flashy, shiny eye kitten!

 

And stop adding idiotic immersion breaking rubbish like the cat chair or the queensdale academy outfits! Stuff like that killed many games in the past (Tera anyone?). You need to have your unique style, not some pixel effect cloud driving around in a clown car!

[Randulf.7614]

1 hour ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

I would love some more elegant weapon choices. Rifles that look like rifles. Pistols that look believable. Realistic sized swords, greatswords. Elegant rapiers, flexible florets, hefty sabres.

But we got magical-toy-clunky-crap weapons instead. So tiring. So tiring.

Also new hairstyles! New cultural armor! Give me something to work for that looks nice and thematic! Not some flashy, shiny eye kitten!

 

And stop adding idiotic immersion breaking rubbish like the cat chair or the queensdale academy outfits! Stuff like that killed many games in the past (Tera anyone?). You need to have your unique style, not some pixel effect cloud driving around in a clown car!

Whilst i agree with your final point, that ship sailed long before even HoT appeared. Putting aside the core legendaries, they started adding things like those ridiuclous looking angel wings copied directly from Diablo. It didn't fit or look right.

But, I'm pretty certain we are the minority here. The "unique style/immersion breaking" argument doesn't appear to be something the vast majority care about and it clearly has helped prop the game's finances up. GW1 had it to a lesser degree so it's not something new to the franchise and I'm at the point if it keeps the game running, it's a trade off I'm content with. It's not hurting the game and with the intense visual noise. most of it goes unnoticed under the fireworks anyway

But on the flip side, there needs to be balance. If we are going to get all this flashy stuff, there needs to more mundane bits for us to earn for the rest of us (eg a turtle mount that doesn't look like the offspring of a comet and a Discworld elephant)

Edited March 18 by Randulf.7614

[Albadaran.1283]

Well I don't know. Compared to Kryta I find the landscapes of the latest expansions amazing. Beautiful! But I did not notice the difference before I bought a new monitor 😄

[ShadowKatt.6740]

And here I expected to find a thread about all the flashes, fields, and particle pollution spam. Instead I seem to have found a thread saying there's not enough? Or the visual spam isn't good enough?

[Sweetbread.3678]

I'd say it's a combination of Daniel Dociu leaving as art director in 2017, the animation department looking like it was hit particularly hard during the mass layoffs that followed in 2019, and then SotO probably being sort of a buffer expac while they fully transition to the new yearly expac development pipeline. GW2 visually peaked with PoF imo, and those first 2 things line up with that. It's also likely that a portion of the animation department has been shuffled to the mystery Unreal engine game Anet's been developing; a new property like that probably requires a lot more animation/model rigging than a game with 10 years of assets to pull from. SotO's not bad by any means, but the level of asset reuse and the weapons releasing 6 months in leads me to believe that it needed more time to cook, but it was probably a scenario of either having a 9+ month post-Gyala content drought or releasing an asset-light expac as a sort of catch-up buffer while switching to the yearly model. I guess we'll just have to wait for the next expac to see if that's true or not. 

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

When Aurene ascended into an Elder dragon, she pretty much blasted through their entire stock of water colors. EoD was where it settled. There is no more left for anything that came after.

[Efar.8153]

yes, i also noticed that the new spell animations look kind of cartoonish(flashy and at the same time not that pretty?)  -  they remind me of the new wow spells... hmm

[Smoky.5348]

On 3/18/2024 at 6:27 AM, Jin.8501 said:

Costs money and they now have to recycle since EoD. PoF was the last time they made new animations and models

I love dumping on ANET, but that's not true. When EoD added a crate-carrying event that slowed you to walking speed, they realized charr had no walking animations for two-handed bundles and finally made new ones. They even took the opportunity to polish up other missing charr movements! It was one of the few times ANET did something right! And, it was for something as miniscule as walking anims. You take what you can get.

[starlinvf.1358]

On 3/18/2024 at 11:32 AM, Omega.6801 said:

What's been bothering me the most is the shift in weapon design since EoD. Ever since EoD weapon models have become more and more clunky and toy like, the models look bigger and more like something you'd see in WoW than in GW2.

Designing on a budget, and having to reuse assets to achieve volume.  Welcome to captialism. 

[starlinvf.1358]

13 hours ago, Efar.8153 said:

yes, i also noticed that the new spell animations look kind of cartoonish(flashy and at the same time not that pretty?)  -  they remind me of the new wow spells... hmm

Thats probably not a coincidence. With the amount of people complaining the game should be more like WoW, and a lot of Blizzard Devs being laid off over the last 3 years, theres a decent chance some of them ended up in entry level jobs at Anet.  

[Efar.8153]

On 3/24/2024 at 1:18 AM, starlinvf.1358 said:

Thats probably not a coincidence. With the amount of people complaining the game should be more like WoW, and a lot of Blizzard Devs being laid off over the last 3 years, theres a decent chance some of them ended up in entry level jobs at Anet.  

Oh no. These fresh teams literally tossed the wow lore/narrative to the fires of Teldrasil along with the voice acting, map design, dialogue, iconic characters, ingame immersion, etc.

This gives me anxiety 🥲

 

[KindredPhoenyx.8976]

but... but it's not fashion wars without the flashiness D:

On 3/31/2024 at 3:10 PM, Efar.8153 said:

Oh no. These fresh teams literally tossed the wow lore/narrative to the fires of Teldrasil along with the voice acting, map design, dialogue, iconic characters, ingame immersion, etc.

We don't talk about Danuser.

[Zebulous.2934]

I had thought that they were outsourcing at least some of the cosmetics.  A few outfits and chairs did seem to be generic mmo assets.  The holographic outfit and the personal gyrocoptor chair/glider were the most glaring.  No culture on Tyria has a technologicle asthetic that looks like those items.  For all I know the odd skins could be cut Aeon content.