OK... this is a beautiful image, worthy of Star Trek:
This also:
But THIS... this is nothing like StarTrek:
I wonder... why don't you use images similar to the last one as a game promotion or a new patch? Hmm... I wonder... hmm... ah, it's because it is UGLY!! But the last image is the real representation of your game, not the ones on the top (which you use).
It has become impossible to force myself to enjoy the game because you are unwilling to allow a simple "OFF" switch in the visual options menu. Your game is ugly and cluttered with various unnecessary visual effects which do not relay any vital information. Why do I need a huge, red "beta" hovering over my ship in order to know that I am using an attack pattern??!
PLEASE... make an "off" switch, people have been asking for years...
Comments
I wish there was a way to toggle it off if I don't care to see it.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Especially cause that last pic isn't even the worst I've seen.
The battles early on look much better when activating a tachyon beam without any traits making them über-super-duper-awesome is basically the only thing you can do (and need to do).
More advanced, more options, more of everything isn't always more enjoyable.
Regarding seizures: I always thought that was exaggeration.
But I was playing Into the Hive yesterday and I got very concerned. Someone who's more vulnerable to those lighting shows of Antiproton floors amongst other things, would likely have had an attack.
Now, I believe that with the bloom settings and - a more draconian measure - not using lighting 2.0, you can tone things down a bit. But it doesn't completely solve the problem.
It's not just space anymore, ground missions are slowly turning into one big disco party as well.
I missed a lot then, as I thought they actually were about exploration.
Guess I must review them, then.
They just get less sober.
To be honest, I like almost all the visual effects for abilities (some like plasma storm and Beacon are too much), IN ISOLATION. But when you start stacking dozens of these visual effects on top of each other, like you get when playing team content, it makes it so I CANT SEE ANYTHING. End game content is not enjoyable because of this visual spam.
Behold:
(I outlined my Nebula-class ship in this picture)
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Wow, I am surprised you can even see the Borg unimatrix, usually the effects are so bright and abundant that I can't make out anything on my TV (I play on xbox): the entire screen usually just looks like one giant piece of abstract modern art.
The ship developers at Cryptic do an amazing job.
Still, I want to advise you to try and apply for that job too.
This isn't the only game I've played now that the visual spam is problematic.
I've started getting into FFXIV because of friends, and there are some 24 man raids that are pure visual spam at times because of how many people are using effects at once. It makes it hard to do my role as an up close fighter.
I kind of get the feeling that visual spam is kinda more the norm for MMOs.
Agreed. Ideally there would be "visual levels" from off to the current LSD RAVE CYBERPUNK OW MY EYES THE GOOGLES DO NOTHING AIIIEEEEEE!!!!!
... with a scale like 0, very low, low, medium, medium-high, high, and * SEIZURE *
Even better would be 2 sliders, for you and everyone else. That way you can enjoy your own new toy with full visuals.
Gravity well is a good example to discuss visual effects. Because it is an ability that is actually relevant to other players.
You need to know to where enemies (that you are targeting) are being dragged.
But why would I need to know that someone else is creating lightning and thus additionally damaging other ships with their anomalies, or that they are spore-infused? (Risa Weather event ship's and Hernandez' trait respectively.)
Why should I be witness to someone else calling in a dozen Ba'ul obelisks?
Why should I care that someone else is shooting the enemy with a billion of his fighters?
Why should I be seeing that another player likes to zip around at insane speeds in his escort?
Why do I need to see torpedo spreads of other players when I already know they won't hit me?
Most of the visual effects serve no purpose. If an ability only affects the enemy, I could, if I were for some reason interested, just look at their status icons.
@Cryptic
Literally the only effects from other players' abilities I need to see, are the ones that (like GW) actually physically affect enemies. In this game, me using some weapon doesn't affect other players' performance. I cannot hit other players with my torpedoes, me using a certain ability (like Fire on my Mark) doesn't become less effective if it's used on multiple enemies... there's literally no point in players seeing each other's stuff in like 99% of the cases.
And we don't need the entire screen to be filled just to try and communicate that an enemy is affected by one of these very few abilities that actually do matter to other players.
BUT - FFXIV allows you to turn off and tone down the visual effects of others (and I know because I've done it for FFXIV and my main's a Monk, so yeah, I get what you're talking about). STO doesn't.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
That Beacon of Kahless really is blinding. I'm all for having the ability of toning down all those effects.
Im pretty sure they have the manpower and capability. But the dev's answer to bosses whose only concern is money... and flashy new things make them money, while the calendar and qol changes don't...
True, but the data on what visuals to show where in the scene is sent from the server. The "other people's visuals off" setting would reduce network traffic a bit even though it wouldn't reduce server CPU load.
While I like canned spam, visual spam is quite annoying.
Actually, what I was pointing out was that adding an on/off-switch that would make it possible to
- either remove all visual effects that stem from other players' actions
- keep things as it is
would be much simpler.
And it would hardly hurt. The GW example shows that it's only a very, very small minority of abilities that are relevant to other players. The rest can just be disabled. All of it can be disabled with very small sacrifices to clarity of what is happening and why, if it has to be kept simple.