You call that an Earthquake?

Does anyone else here think that the graphics used for the skills are a little bit lacking? I know some of you may say that this has nothing to do with game play, but this can be true and untrue.

For example, when you cast Meteor Spell (pretty powerful spell to pull a meteor from orbit and have it strike the person of your choice right?) Basically when you cast this skill you see a rock come from the sky and hit someone in the head, and they drop down. Would it not be useful if the meteor left a decal or mark on the terrain? This would be helpful to see if you were on the other team and look/be more realistic.

What about other spells like Gladiator's Defense or Balanced Stance? Assuming this skill has to do with how you hold/position yourself in combat. Would it not be helpful to see the warrior actually change his stance or visibly block or parry an attack? How about different visible changes when you cast an enchantment/hex on someone rather than the generic ring of white or black around your character.

The point being is that when you are in the middle of combat whether it be pvp or pve it is hard to see what all is happening on screen with multiple people around you. It’s hard to visually know what is happening to you other than the red lettering that they use to show you lost hit points.

The whole point of this is to understand and better adapt to in game situations. I myself find it hard to understand all the skills being used at one time in PvP or HoH matches. For example while in pvp you are hit with "Earthquake" + "Aftershock" + "Whirlwind" + "Gale" + "Etc". In the extreme rush of pvp it’s hard to see all of those effects damaging you in the mist of 15 other people, and understanding all of it. If you could actually see cracking earth from the spell cover the area of effect of the earthquake or a huge whirlwind that is as big as the area that it effects it would be a lot easier than having to watch tons on numbers scroll by and not understand what is happening. Especially for the younger players. I don’t wish for a total overhaul of the graphics, but I wish they would at least make the spell effects Simi realistic.

I understand this issue is why they made an overhaul to the way we view the other persons skills being used in a recent update. This only works for the person in your view, but not the person casting a spell on you from 100 foot away. Well anyway guys this is just something I have been thinking and wondered if anyone else did too.

they didnt implement this sort of thing so low end computers/dialup could handle it.

That's what the graphic slider is for. As for dial up, the spell effects would be downloaded onto your computer through a patch. It wouldn't lag anything more than the current system, and I can tell you right away that I would DEFINITELY love to see something like this happen in chapter two. Or sooner. Arena Net said that Chapter two will exceed even the greatest expectations, and that's my expectation, damn it. That, and have a pet that doesn't get stuck on trees, and has some sort of control.

Agreed, I know I'm somewhat confused as to why Final Thrust is a slash...

Big holes in the ground after meteors... neat...

Haha, great point on that. I'd never noticed.

there are some graphics for spells that they REALLY have to change like:
Maelstrom
Chaos Storm
Chain Lightning
Earthquake
Crystal Wave

you know it would help to see that im under a maelstrom BEFORE i cast a meteor shower and then have it canceled because im not paying attention to the 10 different red numbers flyin above my head

Chaos Storm and Maelstrom especially. The AoE on these spells is larger than the graphic shows it being which is more of a gameplay issue than graphical upgrade.

me too

At least you see Chaos Storm. Maelstorm is totally stealth. But i suppose it makes it fair to use. Since its not very powerful and meant more as an aoe interrupt. As for having a giant dragon coming down and hurling a meteor at someone..i think i'll pass. It's bad enough that casting something like meteor storm is obvious enough without a huge fmv shouting out to everyone that im about to set them up the bomb.

Obviously the animation would take place after you'd already cast your spell.

I agree, all of these would look very nice. The rest of the game is so pretty, and early spells like fire strom really got me excited about what's in store. Sadly, firestorm is one of the most graphically impressive spells in the game. Although this would require a major overhaul, I feel it would improve the gameplay experience for everyone.

more like a round house.

There IS a thrust in Final thrust. Look again.

Very good points guys. I dont know all of the problems other people have been having as i play Ranger/Warrior/Neco/Monk primarys.

As for how this would help strategy I can give you a couple of better examples. You may not agree with me in these situations, and may even have a better way to do it, but here it goes.

When planning attacks with more than one elemental it is helpful to see the true radius of your spells, such as Whirlwind and Earthquake, so they do not overlap or use them at the same time as this spell does not knock down people that are already knocked down. There are a couple of spells that already show you their radius, such as, Well of the Profane and Ward against Melee.

Here is another point on Whirlwind. I don’t know about you guys, but when watching the Discovery Channel these things look a little different than the ones provided in the game. So unless you have the elemental targeted that is casting it, you have no idea what is going on until you attack, and notice that you have been knocked down. It’s almost like they didn’t even try to make it look decent, or maybe they were going for some sort of stealth whirlwind (if this is the case I guess they hit it spot on).

When you are attacking a warrior and doing no damage I think it is kind of cheesy that you have no idea why, unless it is Gladiators Stance and causing damage to yourself and then you can read the red text. I believe we should know this difference between the warriors actually blocking an attack with his stance or using a removable enchantment that is causing them to evade all of your attacks. This could be easily fixed and you would not even have to include additional models of characters. Just use the same animation that is shown when you first use the Stance; however, instead of executing a 1 second graphical animation use the same animation looped until the stance is over.

I understand that it is possible to determine all of these things without my suggestions, but when you have 15 other people around you in HoH it can be confusing where the damage is coming from and how to react to it. When you are in combat with maybe 4 vs 4 it may not be needed, but with more people added in the mix it would definitely help you react and adapt.

PS.. who else was sadly disappointed at the "Phoenix " lol.... i miss the Final Fantasy 7 Phoenix. It's not that a awesome graphical update is needed, they just have some poor artwork in my opinon. Although everything else in the game is beatiful. This kinda reminds me of Morrowind, as it had a beautiful world, and for some reason the team that did all of the models for the humans didn't look like they knew what they were doing (some models looked aweful).

Yeah, good idea. Unholy feast as well. A little green circle comes out from around you, yet hurts enemies at at least double the distance it shows. I think some of the elites as well should have more impressive effects.

And I wish there's a maker to tell me where I've laid my traps.

As one of my main PvP builds is a Trapper i would love to see markers for traps also, but lets make sure the other team can't see them lol.

Yes, the effect is so very lacking. It all look so Wimpy.
I have said, to make Necro's Soul Reaping primary more attract, add some nice effect to it (like the soul of fallen fly out twoard the Necro, floating around him/her for while)

More Aura, more effect.

I'm hoping maybe the expansion pack may bring more high quality, visible effects... That really would add a lot to the game. I love that soul reaping idea.

Yeah graphics like that would reallly be awesome. I mean just making it look cooler is a step up. The current stuff is good, but good point. Hope it gets into next chapter.

Prettying up the aoe graphics would be a huge nerf to them in pvp, and that's the last thing they need.

Morganas could you explain how that would be a nerf?

Care to elaborate? It may be stealthy for the maelstrom since it's graphic can be hard to notice at times, but there is no reason why players shouldn't be able to visually SEE the range of an AoE.

Being able to see the range would make it much easier to exit the aoe. As it is, with meteor shower in a hectic fight, it's pretty common for people to not sidestep far enough, since it's hard to see the middle. A graphical improvement would let people leave it easier.

Maelstrom, as pointed out, is pretty stealthy as is, and you can often get one good interrupt in since it's so hard to see.

Chaos storm is junkier than the others in part because it's too flashy. It should be toned down more. Same goes for firestorm.

People should have difficulty seeing the range of aoes because those spells become almost worthless otherwise. As it is the only spell that doesn't pull my eyes from the party screen as a monk is maelstrom, anything else can be avoided almost completely even while under slow effects. Concealing damage sources would be a big step towards improving aoe too, instead of saying "26 maelstrom" it could just say "26 Cold."

While it might make it easier for someone to escape from your clutches, I think a patch or addition like the OP suggested is desperately in need, and it would make up for that shortcoming by making other things easier in pvp. Everything that you saw the enemy team use, you'd be able to recognize easily, without looking at the red letters. Or having them selected as your target..

There are just so many skills right now that have basically no visual effect.. it's horrible. Wouldn't it be cooler if, for instance, Vereta's Aura sent out like these spirit like green rays to all the undead affected? That way your team would be like, wow, that guy's using Verata's Aura.. or at least ask about it. Otherwise, no one would notice the skill use, or how much you're helping your team. This isn't the only skill like this, there are just so many skills..

signed maelstrom is worst, i cannot tell until i cast? maybe my graphics is too low?

i think this is a great idea..........we could have an effects slider that would let us see these or not.....dial up users could keep effects low.

I really like that idea about concealing the AoE damage ("26 Cold" instead of "26 Maelstrom") and compensating with more indicative graphics. Might add another layer of micro to PvP and make AoE a little bit more effective in PvP. Plus it just seems cool.

/signed

Chaos storm, what a joke. Since when do storms look like little swirls near my feet? I was hoping it'd be a huge tornado or cloud striking lightning down. And Maelstrom... I don't think there's even an animation for it... or is there?

There is a little swirl on the ground for maelstrom but it can be easy to miss seeing that I suppose. I'm guessing the general lack of extra effects is because its just too much work when you have over 400 skills and 6 classes to work with. Of course they took some shortcuts like most enchantments have the same aura except for death nova which is green. Not much different than palette swaps for different monsters and reused animations I suppose.

/signed

Guild Wars is supposed to be one the best Fantasy MMORPG's out there. Implementing this would certainly make it NUMBER ONE(at least in my book)...

It would be just too distracting.

/signed

Completely agree, the animations for spells in this game are poor, meteor shower sounds pretty nasty, but its just a cloud of dust with a rock or two, fire storm is pretty awful aswel, but the worst of all is rodgorts invocation, sounds good, 25en, 5 secs cast, dragon in the icon, then boom, nothing!

Some of these ideas would make the game so much more impressive - I play a Necro, and I could just see that Soul Reaping gonig on. But yeah - most of these spell effects are pretty weak, and it would be cool to see the Warrior's in their stance's. Think anything will change at this point though? I have my doubts... Here's hoping

/SuperSuperSigned

Definitely. I hope they come back and improve the original GW skills' graphics as well, rather than just releasing prettier skills in the expansion packs.

At the moment I'm also playing Grandia 3 on the PS2. The spell graphics are amazingly cool. (although many are far too over the top for a game like GW, but even the basic stuff blows GW away)

I don't see how GW expects to compete in a japanese/taiwanese market full of console gamers who play Final Fantasy X, etc. with such dull spell and attack graphics.

(ps. WoW is even worse! WoW sucks! Mwahaha!)

Specifically, it would be nice if elem spells looked cooler. However, one thing I noticed whilst observing the GWWC is that other class spells (which generally follow the template of "sparkly effect around your target") need to be made more distinctive and obvious. Take Reversal of Fortune. A big spiky aura appears around the caster, but on the target, only a very subtle sparkle occurs. I'd rather it was the other way around, or better yet, instead of sparkles, some sort of energy-shield like effect appears on the target, so it's clear that he's being "protected" in some way.

Also, it'd be nice if there was some animation/effect for "block" and "evade", rather than just letters popping up. Similarly, a way to distinguish damaging hits from low damage hits.

Oh and Meteor Shower should be changed. Those fake meteors are a crime against er, humanity. At least make them do some damage but not knock down or something.

It'd also be cool if spell graphics changed a little depending on how powerful it is. Eg. Increase the scale of the projectile slightly for a Fire 16 Flare vs. a Fire 0 Flare.

I dont buy the argument that "better graphics would nerf some skills because they are no longer "stealth". If a skill needs to be ignored to be any use, then it's an argument to improve the skill somehow. (eg, aoes like Maelstrom, etc.)

Oh, and Obsidian Flame should be "taller". Currently the particles that are spawned are almost completely hidden "inside" the model of the target. For such a powerful spell, it's almost completely unseen.

Incidentally, dialup vs. broadband makes no difference to your graphics performance, it's all client side. How fast your pc and graphics card is, -does- make a difference. But go Effects Detail slider.

And often more impressive spell/skill effects is not an issue of technology, but simply an issue of artistry. You can get amazingly cool stuff even with low-end graphics if you do it with style and an appreciation of how to make things look impressive.

It saddens me when a skill like shield of deflection has a much more noticable animation than maelstrom.

So yes, we do need some more animations... nothing incredibly flashy, just something to make it (more) visible.

If anything spammable stuff should have LESS intensive animations since they are used more, thus creating MORE graphics need.

Maelstrom looks amazing when it first goes into effect, its a giant dome of water-ish energy with lots of sparkles. Then it turns into a little swirling pool- LAME.

I'd like it if Maelstrom would just stay like a dome and swirl around.

Great Idea but making such a update however is
difficult and time consuming. Its not simple with programming
you know so if you wanna see such a update I suggest you
wait intill chapter 2....

yup, a lot of great ideas here guys keep it up:

-life siphon and life transfer could have like a green beam that goes from the one using the skill and to the attacked and that beam would be there as long as the hex was on.
-When you had spiteful spirit, emphaty, backfire..etc, you had green/purple magical wires around you or electrisity so that people can understand why the elementalist stopped attaking

I agree entirely

I was quite annoyed the first time I tried the spell phoenix, I had fireball on my skill bar at the same time and thought I pressed the wrong button

And why doesn't Guardian,Shield of Regeneration, and other skills that should have very noticable apearances just make halo's around a character?

The most odd animation is the one when you get interupted..... You kind of fall over but are right back up 1/4 of a second after.

If they put as much animation effort as they did in Shield of Deflection for every other skill, then this game would blow all the others away even more