Would everyone please stop shouting at me!

Hello everyone.

In all of the feedback over i20, there’s one thing that I have noticed that doesn’t seem to have been mentioned, namely how often we’re now getting intrusive combat spam while fighting. Regardless of how you may feel about i20 (IMHO, D-, must try harder) the new Trials and TFs seem to have cluttered up the UI even more so than the garish Classic (but not ‘classic’) Team and League windows.

I ran the Admiral Sutter TF for the first time last night and although lots of fun, the amount of text we’re getting thrown during events is starting to feel a little tedious. The first time I faced down a Warwalker in the Apex TF and saw the ominous red text: WARWALKER IS POWERING UP ITS ORBITAL LANCE, it was impressive. Once I worked out the trick to avoiding it, it became annoying. On the Sutter TF, encountering a spawn of Warwalkers where they all fire at the same time filled up my screen with red text, causing me to fly into another spawn trying to avoid them.

The iTrials are even worse. Not only do we have the Events panel floating in our UI, there’s also the unexplained Blue Box of Exposition that splats down over the screen from time to time. Add to this the frankly annoying text of: MARAUDER IS ENRAGED, USE A GRENDADE! and it’s not just Praetor White that’s ready to take peoples’ heads off. (Seriously, I’m expecting the next Trials to flash luminous green text on and off declaring: ANTIMATTER LOOKED AT YOU FUNNY, HIT HIM IN THE FACE!!! )

So, two questions really: firstly, is there a way to minimise or stop these visual intrusions and secondly, does anyone else feel slightly condescended to by the vibrant warnings? I certainly never saw anything like them when Lord Recluse summoned his Bane Spiders or when Reichsman called down a thunder blast that could knock me out of Granite. Is it just me or is the combat spam starting to grate on your nerves too?

(For what it’s worth, I play on a 22” Widescreen monitor and have my window scale at 85% so it’s not like I have a normally cluttered UI. The extra ‘guidance’ just seems unnecessarily intrusive and annoying.)

It does feel a little "backseat gaming" sometimes; like there's someone standing over your shoulder shouting: "Click that! Go there! Turn on that toggle! Use that power! No, not that one, the other one! Are you even listening to me?!".

Oh God, yes. That annoyed me at first. Thankfully after a while my brain just started ignoring those messages, it's like I see through it.

Another fun I20 thing : the devs designed the whole thing for resolutions so large that if you play on 1280x800, most of the Blue Box Exposition will show up behind targeting windows or health bars. It actually took me a few weeks to notice Prometheus was talking to us during the trials.

It would be nice to be able to disable those messages.

I agree somewhat, although if there ever is a way to turn them off, I'd like for there to be multiple stages of off.

War walker's orbital strike? off - There's already plenty of visual warning, and it barely phases my more durable characters anyhow.

Marauder is enraging? off - Thanks for the message, but I can already tell from the objective window.

Marauders nova fist? on - as far as I can tell this thing can not be resisted or defended against, and the only thing that keeps you alive is the 1 hit ko prevention. Add to this, that with the power effects from (up to) 16 players and the melee types crowding around, the only way I notice when he jumps away half the time is that my powers stopped working, never mind see the visual cues that he's going to hit you with this.

Seige/nightstar warnings? on - sometimes if there's no tank/brute and their attention switches rapidly, it can be hard to tell whom those double rings are centered on. I know when I see "[my name] second warning" to back away from the group without having to check periodically if it is, in fact, my rings. (that said I do try to back away from any double rings i see anyway)

My son was watching me play last night and he was calling out the move warnings for the nova fist to me. Very helpful to a Dad with perpetual scrapperlock. I would certainly keep that warning and the sequestered warnings in the BAF.

Frankly, I'd like them to add a few more shouty text boxes.

USE YOUR MOLECULAR ACIDS ON THE PORTALS TO CLOSE THEM.

USE. YOUR. ACIDS.

YES, YOU TOO. YOU OVER THERE AT THE BACK, STARING AT THE WALL AND /E NOSEPICKING. USE YOUR MOLECULAR ACID!

OF COURSE YOU DO. CHECK YOUR TEMP POWERS.

I SAID TEMP POWERS. OVER THERE ON THE...GOT IT? AWESOME. NOW THROW IT!

OH FOR GOD'S SAKE NO, STOP CLICKING ON THE PORTAL THAT'S ALREADY DEACTIVATED. I DON'T KNOW, CALL YOURSELVES INCARNATES, I MIGHT AS WELL HAVE HIRED A BUNCH OF HELLIONS. SCREW THIS, I'M GOING HOME.

It's probably just the Well trying to be helpful

Maybe if the Grenades showed up in a color button instead of the white one like all the rest of the temp powers people might see it easier? Some of the Powers granted by doing Alignment Missions are blue and easy to see.

Personally I try to keep one slot open on Tray 1 for it to drop into but not everyone is that thoughtful.

How about...

UNUSED ACIDS WILL EXPLODE AND KILL YOU IN TEN SECONDS ... NINE ... EIGHT ...

I wouldn't mind there being options to make the wall of text disappear or become smaller but, truth be told, my mind has already started to filter out the unnnecessary junk. I usually don't respond to Orbital strike warnings anymore. Marauder enraged? Check I can see that in the UI box. Some NPC talking during trials/ tfs? Read first couple of times, don't need to again.

Simply stated: the things I don't need to see anymore are like the dirt on my glasses-- my mind filters it out and then every once in awhile I suddenly take notice that they (my glasses) are cruddy. After cleaning, things look slightly different, then the crud starts building up again. Now I'm off to clean my glasses....

Zombieman wins the thread XD

In all honesty I think the perfect way to remedy the bit about Lambda trials and the temp acid powers is to make it literally explode and kill the user after 30 seconds of the first gate being taken down. That is the only way "those" people will actually start using them.

In complete agreement. Ran Sutter for the first time last night, ridiculous amounts of Red text. Duray calling in an air strike? Oh, you mean the million arrows glowing all over the ground? Duray is teleporting? Do I really need to be told what I'm already seeing?

Please allow for an option to turn these off.

Are you suggesting not being warned first so you can just stand there and take the damage? Keep in mind that not all attacks you get warned about have nice targeting reticules laid out on the ground for you to avoid. And when you're in the middle of a large group, with F/X going off everywhere, you're more likely not to notice when something's got your number.

i too have also grown kind of annoyed by all the text, the war walker stuff is pretty easy to notice, but a lot of it just seems like spam

options to turn it off would be really nice, but i dont think they could do options for specific ones, maybe just have certain ones bypass the options to always appear such as sequestering and nova fist (which is unresistable BTW)