Can anyone really see through the clutter?

#1 - Oct. 24, 2013, 1:38 a.m.

All other issues aside with this game aside…does it just seem to be getting more and more screen cluttered? I know I’m getting old but after having recently been in some other mmo betas I came back to gw2 and was amazed at how messy it felt. I don’t feel like I can ever see whats going on in many circumstances due to the akward ui, spell graphics, bad camera, and just overall clutter. I see people on here talking about looking for cast animations and things like that but I don’t reasonably understand how you can see i minute gesture through all the rest of the mess. Then with the terrible optimization it just seems to make the issues all the worse. Can other people really see these things?

ColinJohanson

#31 - Oct. 24, 2013, 10:47 a.m.

One of the projects we’re working on in preparing the game to release in new regions is trying to make the game easier to learn. While a lot of that work is in the area of better tutorials, better level up messaging guides, and unique tutorials for specific mechanics we’re also evaluating UI complexity (and system complexity) to try and make information easier to see/consume.

Cleaning up the existing UI systems to make them less cluttered, more-stream lined, and better unified is part of this project and absolutely something you’ll see in the west as well, likely around or possibly even before we release the game in our next major world region.

And to get ahead of the next question: No, we have no solid dates! We’re still in beta in China and are testing and developing all of these new systems to make the game is easier to learn. We haven’t announced timelines for development any other major regions other than being in Beta in China at this time.

ColinJohanson

#180 - Oct. 31, 2013, 9:54 a.m.

Aza.2105:
Hey Colin,

I would like to see Anet address the insane particle effects.

I can never anticipate when to dodge the statue of dwayna attacks because of this. You can barely make out the enemy model. Particle effects are nice and all, but in gw2 they are overly done. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this issue in any mmorpg I’ve played.

Yeah we’ve done a number of steps already this year to improve it, but we have a long ways to go to get it cleaned up to the point we’re happy with. It’s something we’re continuing to work on for sure, but we’re focusing way more on game performance currently before we turn back to the FX side.

ColinJohanson

#195 - Oct. 31, 2013, 4:47 p.m.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:
With all due respect, what part of excessive particle spam is NOT effecting my game performance. I guess someone will have to explain that to me..

Apparently I need to be more clear…By performance I’m talking about the work we’re doing to improve server lag when large #‘s of players come together we’ve been updating on lately that has been a major discussion topic lately.

Obviously graphical performance is a type of performance as well, my point is it’s not the part we’re currently as focused on, but are also well aware of and want to improve.

JonPeters

#207 - Nov. 1, 2013, 12:17 p.m.

To add to what Colin said, the first step is to go into options, click on the graphics tab and make sure the Effect LOD option is checked. We will continue to tweak the #s that option provides as well but I want to make sure you are at least using that option.

Jon

JonPeters

#209 - Nov. 1, 2013, 12:25 p.m.

What is does is start to reduce the amount of particles and details on effects once you have a certain # of them on screen. This system relies on us manually setting up a value for how noisy any given effect is so if turning it on does nothing in certain areas, we could simply not have set those effects up correctly. A cursory look at the data seems like they are setup, but there might be some caveats in how the Effect LOD system works that keeps it from turning on for those instances because it is an “important” boss. I’ll dig a bit deeper when I can.

Jon