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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Nice attack movements, terrible special effects
George_Black
Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha Two
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WCVcgZ8dtD0In my opinion, I think the examples in this video of colour explosions covering the screen should be avoided for AoC.
I do like the character movement/attack/weapon swing animations and I think with a tiny bit of special effects on top of them would look better than what is shown in the video.
They may fit the ff franchise but do they belong in mmos?
What is your opinion on these massive explosions and colour clutter?
What is your opinion on the attack (weapon swings) animations?
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Comments
Well like every other thread asking this same question my response is the same as always. But you asked a more refined question than others so lets answer.
Ashes is high fantasy. Particle effects, are a way to convey this fact. Energy, explosions, magic, dramatic expression of calamity are all things that make high fantasy feel high fantasy. Large sweeping scale and depth of impact is another. So yes 'large colorful explosions' fit my definition oc high fantasy and therefore my perception of them being quite reasonable for Ashes' setting.
'Do they belong in an mmo.' Yes. Discerning movement and the order of chaos in large skirmishes is a skill. A skill that few game genres other than mmo's and maybe team champion fighters have the opportunity to exercise. If the particle effects are made such that people with such a skill can't tell what is going on they are made poorly. But that's not a flaw in the concept of colorful dramatic particle effects themselves.
AoC's weapon animations are terrible imo. You probably can guess why.
I'm swinging a sword, not a roman candle. In the sieges, if they stick with the over top effects it will look like seizure soup. I think those effects really detract from combat. Big, special spells and moves get lost in a mess and you don't have those moments of "OH Shit! Our mage just blew all his big cooldowns and it did no damage!" or whatever.. Sucks out the immersion too when my flaming shield bash lights up my level 3 warrior's screen like.. calm down man, you were killed by a big snail yesterday.
I am not fond of anything I've seen, action effect wise so far but.. I AM fond of everything ELSE I know of the game so... Might just have to live with it.
Regarding the last sentence; it's just A1 so far.
Or the sparks of your sword bouncing off my armor
Haha! Keep in mind if my sword is near your armor, it’s because you already have 27 arrows feathering your corpse and I’m adding insult to injury. 🤪
Oh
I thought those were my arrows. Awkward
☠️
vfx in A1 were underwhelming and sometimes superfluous - but they've said 100x that it's placeholder.
FF on the otherhand has FX that are really easy to read and you can clearly understand the intention of what is going on . What I don't like with FF is that sometimes 1 person's vfx is filling a quarter of the screen with white bloom effects, which is too much for my tastes. And some vfx are 7 slashes even though the model only swung the weapon once - which I don't like (would prefer 1 phat vfx, or 7 quick swings (even if you freeze-frame the 7 swings or motion blur them))
My ideal would be: similar action to FF effects, but with the size of fx reduced according to how important the ability is, in particular the "white core" of FF vfx could be made thinner and used more sparingly.
(e.g. I don't mind the huge pillar of light when jumping up to do a ground slam - but if you're just swiping your sword, it seems excessive to make it look like you're holding 100 lightsabers, just 1 will do).
Honestly though, I'm happy for Ashes to develop its own style - as long as the style is readable and conveys the intention of the ability.
Also I'll never get over this:
My take on this though, it that it is an argument against the types of effects in the OP, not for that type of effect.
While some particle effects are needed, if you have a dozen people all in melee range of each other, and you have them all firing off the effects as per the OP, not only are you not going to have any clue what is going on, but you are likely to have a damn seizure.
Such effects (the scale, as much as anything) are not suited to an MMO, high fantasy or not. They are best left to single player or 1v1 situations, where the effects can shine.
The players animations in FFXIV are just too over the top for me. Yes, I still play the game, but that does not mean I play it for the animations.
There was a hard to describe magic about FFXI. The magic and animations were simple enough to make things seem believable. The character actually looked like they were focusing their efforts on casting the spell. Magic looked like it was actually a challenge for your character to preform.
These days in FFXIV characters are doing like backflips and cartwheels while casting magic. It's just not a style I am interested in. When you try and make everything look cool and over the top. Nothing looks cool.
For Ashes I would prefer they stay away from the over the top crap.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
As for the seizure warning bit I think that is a serious consideration for the games accessibility design. I think sieges and world bosses are going to be really hard to not be problematic for gamers with that vulnerability regardless of the particle effect design. In fact I would argue they would need to be turned off entirely for those gamers, and therefore shouldn't be a direct consideration for the normal particle effects themselves.
I hate them and I think they should be removed in general.
Some exceptions I can take, such as ''ultimate abilities''.
I dislike them, too flashy.
The weapon animation is nice. I personally dont really watch that when i play im more busy watching people hp bar and avoid dmg on me.
As for the VFX i find them a bit too extra. Like ok they look good but after a while i would just turn them off cause its annoying and i couldnt see my character. Same for boss attack. Like do i really need to see the smoke covering my whole screen cause he made a tiny explosion
Not much more to say about it since Steven wants this.