test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Die gloriously
fleetcaptain5
Member Posts: 5,051 Arc User
"We never want our ships to explode. We spend lots of time making sure our ships don't explode. But if we are going to explode, it should look nice, shouldn't it? Ship Artist and FX Artist Ian Richards thought the same, and so he took the time to rebuild the FX that play when your ship is damaged, all the way up until it explodes. This launches next week on PC, and very soon after on Console. You can see the full difference in the new FX in the video below."
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/11500773-die-gloriously!
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/11500773-die-gloriously!
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Yep. TFOs are a mess of so many overlapping visuals. I often (not always) want to see my own visuals but not 4 other sets making it look like a rainbow Beacon of Kahless.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
It's not that I dislike it, it's just an example of (to me) working on the wrong feature.
In fairness it's possible the people involved were not the ones who would work on adding control over visuals. For example if it was just the art staff, while it is the programmers who'd add controls.
+1
Or at least reduced them massively
From what I've tried, it seems it doesn't depend on your remaining hull only, but also on how hard you hit or get hit. You also have a few new effects, like explosions from weapon impacts, similar to the impacts of the DSC and Kelvin Timeline bolts, and some kind of plasma/energy leak:
Both fires and leaks tend to disappear a few seconds after the severe hit(s) that caused them, unless your hull is very low, then you're likely to have them stay longer or until your ship is destroyed.
Also, no confirmation, but they seem to be somewhat localized.
While it's a nice idea, it can also lead to funny situations where you still have like 70% hull but you took several hits in a row that the game deemed "worthy" of causing those new effects, so for a few seconds you have like 3 fires leaving bigger trails than your engines, an energy leak and you just came out of two smoky explosions that swallowed half of your whole ship.
So long as it only affects Player ships, this should be fine as far FX spam goes. I just kinda wish the devs would take our feedback on it more seriously, particularly when it comes to ground missions. "The rule of cool" has a way of being mercilessly abused to the point where it's not even remotely cool anymore.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
And since the remaining hull isn't the only factor now, the bigger the damage sponge, the more likely the VFX spam.
EDIT: And when Tribble is available again, actually. That timing... "-Hey, here's a new stuff on Tribble! -Cool, can I go see by myself? -............. HAHAHAHAHA!"
The problem most devs tend to bring up is that the visual effect system was never designed to differentiate between sources. Everything just runs on one effect layer, so trying to give people sliders to turn down visual effects just means everything, including basic weapon attacks, gets tuned down into nothing. While they can edit individual effects, most effects by themselves aren't an issue, its the stacking of effects thats the real problem, and people tend to get angry when their favorite effect stops looking cool. Its a rather annoying issue, but I've not seen many games come up with a solution that makes everyone happy.
Would be nice to see a least a few effects like the space tornadoes get tuned down a bit though.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
While I don't disagree with you on any particular point, there are other solutions. Even if they are low impact. For example, I spent the past couple weeks looking for a way to get the Anti-Time Entanglement module off my build without losing any dps. It was trickier than it sounds, because it's a really high dps kit module, but worth it because the thing is such an eye-sore.
If they could introduce kit modules that were comparable to Cold Fusion Flash and Endothermic Induction field that were less FX intensive, I would replace those in a heartbeat. But there just isn't anything.
Would having alternatives clean up the game completely? No. Some people will always use them. But it would help.
No kidding, even players with high end rigs in my fleet are saying their fps goes to sub 30 with all of the onscreen FX when we run TFO's.
For me, the problem isn't that they added nice visuals. It's that they made it a priority to add them to something most players will work hard to avoid ever seeing those visuals. When, moreover, we've been asking for LESS visual spam for years.
And yes, I am working on the assumption here (as Dave mentioned) that those who made these changes would have been the people involved in making the other, actually requested changes.
I don't really have fps issues. It's just that it's usually difficult to enjoy flying your ship when you can't see it most of the time.
Most abilities' visuals don't even make sense. A large B hovering over your ship when activating APB for example. Abilities like Delphic tear that seem to have their origin in the space above and below your ship and everything between it, instead of just coming from the deflector dish.
Cooldown reducing traits that add a large clock-like effect underneath your ship every couple of seconds... and so on.
It just makes everything ugly. And if ugliness is what I wanted to see, I wouldn't spend thousands of Zen to get different versions of ships to be able to combine them, hundreds of thousands of dilithium or tens of millions of EC to get vanity shields and many of these resources to obtain a specific weapon type.
Hell, even just hovering your cursor over certain abilities can utterly annihilate your framerate for no particular reason.
That's because a lot of gamers LIKE power visual effects (I too think they are WAY overdone in STO - but I'm sure the majority of actual players, most of which don't post anywhere, they just play; couldn't care less, or actually like the various visual cues that a power activated.)
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..."
One of the reasons why I like leveling up a new character once in a while is for the clean early game, where it's just your ship in story episodes with small numbers of enemies and minimal visual spam.
Also, at low levels the older and single-target powers still seem useful against enemies without the need for all the AOE ones.