Reduce the visual spam from Cnidarian ship console please

fleetcaptain5

Some maps are just not build for effects this large.

I've been playing Defense of SB 1 three times in the last couple of hours on different toons. Everytime there was at least one player who turned like half the active part of the map into one huge purple sphere.
At some point I was just considering going AFK so that I could ignore the whole thing, that's how annoying it is.


It is bad enough that visual effects cannot be disabled (and no, I don't need to know what someone else is using, I don't care, in most cases it simply isn't relevant to know), but if you're going to design powers that have 100% potential uptime then they should be less disturbing than this console is. Certainly on small maps where everyone has to be in/near the same spot or two.


In missions like Infected Space or Tzenkethi Front it wouldn't matter so much because you can go anywhere and the inability to move your ship makes the console less useful there anyway.
But in too many other missions (like Counterpoint, DoSB1, Crystalline entity and so on) a power

- this big and
- that's active 100% of the time

is just too disturbing and dominant to keep things enjoyable.

orangenee

We've begged, we've got down on our kness and pleaded for less VFX spam on both ground and in space.

"You need to know what's happening though" they say. We say " We don't know what's happening anyway, it's like we're being subjected to MK-ULTRA", and so the merry-go-round continues.

I had two of those things doing it earlier, on Gravity Kills. Things were a bit trickier than usual.

davefenestrator

How else can you attempt to top someone else's badlands plasma storm? How else can you keep the seizure going after the beacon of kahless fades? We need MORE spam!

Sigh. We got an answer from Kael and it seemed to boil down to: It's too much work to fix everything so we've settled on doing nothing. AKA perfect is the enemy of good, and it's won this war

fleetcaptain5

davefenestrator wrote: »

How else can you attempt to top someone else's badlands plasma storm? How else can you keep the seizure going after the beacon of kahless fades? We need MORE spam!

Sigh. We got an answer from Kael and it seemed to boil down to: It's too much work to fix everything so we've settled on doing nothing. AKA perfect is the enemy of good, and it's won this war

I wouldn't even mind so much that they're not going back and changing everything they've already created. (1) At least then there would be the reasonable argument that they prefer to keep looking forward and releasing new things, instead of looking back at things already created.


But at least - when creating new things then - they should keep in mind that the playerbase generally doesn't like these extreme visuals. I'm not a Dev, obviously, but common sense tells me that it would be less work if they didn't create these disrupting things than if they did. I'd recommend, then, that they save that time.


(1) Though a slider that lets us simply turn off everything probably wouldn't be as much work as changing every single power individually.

fleetcaptain5

orangenee#2931 wrote: »

We've begged, we've got down on our kness and pleaded for less VFX spam on both ground and in space.

"You need to know what's happening though" they say. We say " We don't know what's happening anyway, it's like we're being subjected to MK-ULTRA", and so the merry-go-round continues.

I had two of those things doing it earlier, on Gravity Kills. Things were a bit trickier than usual.

I'm aware of their reasoning - it's not very convincing indeed. That's why I'd like to keep trying though, because I'm convinced that at least some (if not most) people at Cryptic share the playerbase's concerns - they probably don't need more convincing, they just need to be given time and resources to create a solution.

orangenee

They do need more convincing as they keep adding more, bright dayglo pink seems to be their favourite trolling method currently.

In fact I'm sure Valoreah is right in thinking they are indeed trolling us at this point.

vetteguy904

well, the only way to convince the devs to not put in the spam is to boycott whatever is causing the effect. I could have the sandstorm and anomaly lightning on my EPG toon, but the red grav well is bad enough, and it's not even in the top 10 annoying VFX I opt to not use it in deference to the other players as well as myself. I have not seen the new effect but once. I read the description, and with a 2 minute cooldown I'm curious how it's up 100%?

fleetcaptain5

vetteguy904 wrote: »

well, the only way to convince the devs to not put in the spam is to boycott whatever is causing the effect. I could have the sandstorm and anomaly lightning on my EPG toon, but the red grav well is bad enough, and it's not even in the top 10 annoying VFX I opt to not use it in deference to the other players as well as myself. I have not seen the new effect but once. I read the description, and with a 2 minute cooldown I'm curious how it's up 100%?

That's kind of a difficult thing to do though.

Most players go through a lot of effort to improve their builds and increase their effectiveness. As commendable as it is that you decide not to use some things for the benefit of others, it's not something I'm going to expect of other players.
No, this is something that needs to be fixed by Cryptic. They know we appreciate the (practical) effects of powers/consoles/traits, but that we don't consider the visual effects that come with them as necessary or beneficial.

tmassx

I will support any proposal requesting the reduction (or at least not adding bigger and bigger) of visual spam, not only for the cnidarian ship.
Please Cryptic make nicer ships, better textures, more balanced rules. Give up the over-the-top effects. Remember you're making a multiplayer game and it's not fun when the other players throw some effects at your camera all the time and you can't see anything.
It's like when you're in a room, maybe with some other people, and some kid keeps turning the light switch on and off. What are you going to do? You will leave. I hope you don't want everyone to leave and only the kid stay and will leave anyway soon because he is not having fun alone.

deadlock8118

I mean it's just a joke. Such poor workmanship. And that's before you're literally blinding every player in the instance.

avoozuul

deadlock8118 wrote: »

I mean it's just a joke. Such poor workmanship. And that's before you're literally blinding every player in the instance.

Is that a Borg implant in your pocket or are you just happy to see me

qultuq

Looks like the new effect will be in DS9 sector space on the Tribble server if you want to check it out: Monday, August 1st at 1pm PT,

whistlerdavid

corinthalas wrote: »

They're not going to tone them down. In fact, they've made them progressively worse than those before. If anything, they've given us their answer to our pleas -- the middle finger.

thats not 100% true not sure when you started playing but years ago the crafted plasma torpedo was toned down the plasma clouds where huge and players couldn't see anything took them forever to do it but it did get done. if enough ppl keep talking about the pink bubble both in space and ground they might do it

whistlerdavid

if they made the bubble look sort of like that runner shield screen and just had electricity effects by their ship. so you can visualize it it would look like one of thoughs lamp balles that has the electricity in the middle i think it would fix a lot of peoples problem with it. makes it clearer so people can see without hurting peoples eyes and blocking some of the view. same goes for that ground skill

jonsills

I agree. Something more transparent, so if you need the benefit of someone's field you can find it but it doesn't keep you from seeing what you're doing, would be ideal.

mirrorterran

The irony here is that 99% of you use damage floaters and can't see what you're shooting at to begin with.

orangenee

valoreah wrote: »

corinthalas wrote: »

They cannot, in one moment, claim to understand people's problem with VFX vomit and are looking into how to resolve it, and then repeatedly make the problem worse. The action makes the statement a lie. As the say saying goes, "Actions speak louder than words."

Oh I totally agree, which is why I said the excuses we are being given are not acceptable. Honestly, I do not believe this is going to ever get any better. Best thing we can do is stop playing and stop paying. Maybe then the message will get across.

They'll just shut the game down. MMOs are always looking at an executioner sharpening his axe.

They know they've got us by the dangly parts, it's an impasse.

deadlock8118

corinthalas wrote: »

Correct. They won't take that kind of action to mean that players want them to fix something. They'll take it to mean the game is no longer viable and shut it down.

Then maybe it's time for that.

littlesarbonn

I'll be honest in that this VFx spam from this one ship is ridiculous. I was playing in the Badlands all yesterday and oh wow, it was seriously bad.

theboxisred

Word of mouth is still the best advertisement.

orangenee

littlesarbonn wrote: »

I'll be honest in that this VFx spam from this one ship is ridiculous. I was playing in the Badlands all yesterday and oh wow, it was seriously bad.

4 of them were in Binary Stars, 4. You can imagine the horror.