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What VFX do you feel are too obtrusive?


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Was thinking about this when playing the other day. They scaled back the Web effect to something that is much better than the original mess. Now you can easily see what happens.

 

One other spell I think is a bit annoying is the Fireball. The moments after it hits (which is often the moment where I really want to re-evaluate what I'm doing) it's impossible to see what's happening. It obscures characters and selection circles alike. Obviously a fireball should feel dangerous but yeah, it'd be nice if we could at least see the circles through it.

 

What are some of the visual effects you feel are over the top?

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If a "light" source could be attached to the middle of a fireball VFX, it could show dynamic shadows cast by the Party or Enemies alike. Or have it tied to the explosion itself.

A Fireball is a big ball of fire and light, after all. Could help with clarity?

Otherwise, its effect is short and explosive, I don't think it is obtrusive.

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Fireball definitely, it does not need a persistent after effect, after the hit frame. There's like a mushroom cloud that rises in the middle, followed by smoke.

 

The new Web FX is strange, it doesn't look like a web and you can barely see it, and now the Hobbled FX is more obtrusive than the actual spell itself.

 

TBH all the Hobbled FX needs to be is some stuff stuck around the units legs or something, not a glowing chain around their body.

 

Chill Fog and Grease are also too much.

 

Every Chanter Invocation needs the screen darkening removed.

Will do some more testing some other time and add to the list

 

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I suspect the fx guy is working in a vacuum without having a character model to work with. That would be my top priority when designing vfx. I'd have a test chamber for characters standing around and the fx all happening on screen next to each other so I could see how they all work together. I'd try it on single targets and groups, tall players, short ones, naked and fully geared. What's kind of funny is they literally work less than 2 miles away from a place on the same road that teaches you professionally how to do these types of fx. I think it would have been my prerogative to either go in and talk to them, or hire them for a day to teach the workflow. 

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Yes the hobbled effect is really bad. It should be place around their feets or around the green circle. I think it was a bug but I saw it in a video where the hobble effect is at their feet and it look really good and none obtrucive.

 

you can see it by yourself in this video:

 

at 32:11 min, the character on the left got  the hobble effect at their feet.

Edited by AlekzanderZ
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*downvote*

 

It's not practical at all.

Ha you are right, and I know I am minority on thinking that way. There are some cases where the "feel" is more important to me than how functional it is mechanically. However I would agree that there are at least a handful of effects that are too much.
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One of the things that I think would really help with this whole mess is that there aren't any status effects that are easy to identify shown on enemy units. With my own units, at the very least I can look down at their portrait and get an idea of what buffs and debuffs they have. However, a lot of the animations (hobbled, blinded, etc) are fairly obscure and difficult to understand. I would much rather have a stack of icons atop the unit heads to quickly identify what status effect it is instead of trying to decipher some of these animations.

 

A small blinded icon (eye with cross through it) or a hobbled icon (legs with cross through it) would go much further than some of these new-fangled animations. Yes, they look nice, but they are too glaring and instead of being used to provide information first and then to make things look "cool" second, looking "cool" first seems to take importance and to hell with good visibility.

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