GFX soup: Which power effects do you want to see toned down?

So Tunnel Rat has started a GFX thread, in which people are suggesting all kinds of flashy effects they want to see, but what about those of us who want to see fewer effects? Zombie Man made a good post on the subject here.

Here are some effects I'd rather not see or just see less of:

• Hasten. Might as well get that one out of the way right off the bat. That includes other people's Hasten.
• Superspeed, Superjump, Combat Jump, Sprint, and the hand and foot glow for Hover.
• Cold Shields. They're hideous. Some people are considerate enough to color them dark, which minimizes the hideousness, but most just leave them at default.
• Barrier. Again, in dark colors it's fairly unobtrusive, but with the default or bright colors all I can see is a screen full of stripey bubbles.
• Static Field. This would fall into the "tone it down" category, since it's nice to know where it is, especially when it's a Super Stunner using it. But it's far too bright and flashy.
• Interface debuffs. Are these intense graphical effects really necessary?
• Some powers can be problematic if someone uses poor judgement when customizing them. Force Field and FFG bubbles can obscure anything behind them if they're colored too brightly, as can the big Sonic bubble. Some powers, such as Fire Blast powers, when colored very dark look like someone scribbled on my screen.
• Zeus and Hercules Titan missile smoke.

The horrible nature of ice shields have kept me from making any sort of ice-shielding character. Really, I hate any shields that obscure me but ice is especially bad.

The Titan smoke is a good one. I've gotten into the habit of taking Titans out first, not because they're dangerous as attackers, but because you get two of them and you can't see a single thing on the screen except for flashes of light when another salvo of missiles comes your way.

The thorn sets auto spike thing. I really really really hate hearing that one running over and over and over and over and over and ... More than any of the others.

Oddly enough ... I rather dislike the GFX for Defense/Resistance/Damage/Accuracy/To-Hit/Regeneration/Recovery Buffs and Debuffs.

Defense: BIG purple shields
Resistance: BIG orange shields
Damage: spiky red swirlies
Accuracy and To-hit: floaty crosshairs that fade in and out
Regeneration: green hoola-hoops of anti-gravity
Recovery: blue hoola-hoops of anti-gravity

These things aren't that bad when soloing ... but get a team together camping a spawn point (or fighting to stand next to a mission door inside an instance) and you can quickly get BURIED in useless graphical info. Gets especially bad on close quarters indoor maps (think Council/5th maps) where it can become difficult to see the action beyond the GFX spam.

Hasten however wins the "Worst Ev4r" award for most useless graphics in the entire game. I'd far rather have Synapse's motion blur effect than setting my hands (and arms and head) on fire.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

EVERY. GOD. DAMNED. SINGLE. ONE.

The FX in this game appear to have been designed as if the initiating character is the only thing on the screen. This is so far from wrong it would take the light from wrong 2.3 years to reach it. FX need to be designed as if there are fifty characters on the screen all blazing away, because that's usually the case. As it currently stands, once there's more than 10 characters (counting mobs) on screen and fighting the game quickly turns into a Michael Bay movie where you can't see anything but FX.

Fiery Aura - the constant pulsing/strobing is annoying. It took me months to learn to not see it.

Burn - its core is way too bright.

Just thought of another one: The extraneous glowy crap on Super Strength, Martial Arts, and the melee weapon sets.

Oh, and the transparency on stealth powers. For one thing, they make layered costume pieces look funny. For another, conceptually I'm hard to see because I'm surrounded by mist, or shadow, or because I'm all sneaky like a ninja, not because I'm the Invisible Woman on an off day.

And that red and yellow glowy burst on the Build Up and Aim powers that can't be colored. That can go too.

And whatever it is that makes the game into a slideshow for a few seconds every time I use Pyronic Judgement or a Malta or KoA throws a web grenade at me.

Any powers with the "orbiting flaming rocks" effects. Even better when they're colored lime green or fuchsia or something.

I like the missile smoke from the Titans. It is annoying, but it's what burning things do: make smoke. Move away from it and you can see fine.

There is a graphical option to turn down the particle effects. Does it not affect all these auras?

That misses the point. The goal isn't to eliminate seeing any effects, it was to identify particularly obnoxious effects.

No, You aren't alone.

Of course, we won't mention hasten except to say that I don't know a single player that likes the glowy pom-poms of death. A vital power that destroys every natural, willpower, stealthy concept? Check! (It's bad enough that my sister refuses to take hasten. I won't go that far.)

I play solo, a lot, (mainly because of when I have time to get on) and even solo there are many effects that if I could just dial them down would add to my enjoyment immensly.

I avoid Malta whenever I can. Not because of Sappers or gunslingers but because all I get to see is smoke and orange brackets.

Also, the very nice but ridiculous looking ice blast hold powers, and the earth ones too. There should be some better way to present this on hover/flying targets. It looks silly for some baddie to floating in the sky like a giant ice cube. Also, with Defiance, it looks damn peculiar for a floating lump of rock to be spewing bullets, flames, ice, whatever. Just saying.

A couple of things:

I actually like to have the option of bathing my characters in dense, impenetrable auras, for instance when trying to make a living shadow. Even when I use a pitch black character with a black Thunderhead aura and black Dark Armour toggles, I can still see the tights dude underneath quite clearly because the auras don't cover very well.

This also extends to blasts and such. It's almost impossible to make a "dense" blast that isn't white (additive) or black (subtractive) because any other colour lets the rest of them through and looks like cellophane. I wanted my old Energy/Energy Blaster to have thick, dense BLUE energy blasts, but I had to settle for cyan/white blasts, instead, because the blue ones were almost entirely transparent to everything in the whole game.

---

On the other hand, I don't feel there's a specific need to remove auras and effects so much as actually make the "Suppress Player Effects" option do anything. As it stands right now, you turn it on and nothing changes. Give it a scaling list of what it turns off. Say, from something as benign as not seeing continuing effects from people no on your team which aren't targeting you to NO EFFECT FROM ANY PLAYER BUT ME, PLEASE! Let players pick how much clutter they see.

---

Finally, design auras a bit smarter. Look at Invulnerability after the redesign, for example. Temp Invulnerability consists of sparkles and nothing else, Unyielding is a ring around your legs and Invincibility is an aura in your chest. They each have non-redundant effects, they don't compare with each other and you actually CAN tell what a character is running by looking at the effects they are displaying. Now try and tell me which toggles an Energy Aura Brute is running (Energy Cloak notwithstanding). They all look like the same effect, they're all full-body auras and they produce an indiscernible mess. Design a set's auras to cooperate, not compete.

---

And before I forget - please give us a "No FX" option for all melee sets that constitute direct physical attacks, please. Martial Arts and Super Strength don't need to glow on each attack, or at the very least not without an option for me to turn the glow off if I wanted. Sometimes I really do want a character who just punches things without going Super Sayin in the process.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Please get rid of/provide a "None" option for travel power effects. To this day, I scratch my head over the visual effect that comes from Fly/Hover/Combat Jumping/Superjump.

Superman's hands and feet don't fart air when he flies or leaps tall buildings. Acutally, I don't know of any comic book heroes that suffer from this embarassing affliction.

I'm all for more options.

Allow me to Dissent. I'm visually impaired, bold and distinct visually effects is one of the reasons I can play this game, it's a great accessibility feature. Most buffs are very distinct in both color and shape (unfortunately less so what with power customization, but eh... Can't win 'em all) The exceptions tends to be personal defensive shields.

There are some cases wher ethe effects could be toned down a bit, but most of the time haivng vibrantly colored, clearly visible effects is a good thing.

The force fields vs. ice shields are a perfect example: I have trouble seeing if an enemy is force-fielded or not (have to check the buffs tray, which can get ridicilously long) but when using ice shields it's instantly visible.