Why some spell effects in ashes does not fit the enviroment?

What is this post about?
It's been noticeable for a few shows now that the spell effects don't match the environment. At first I thought it was a question of how high the quality of the environment is, but in retrospect I see that it has many shortcomings, such as foliage. So why do some effects seem not to match? I found the answer to this in Narc's recently released video on mage skills.
So I would like to expand and describe this problem here based on this video for people who don't want to watch it for various reasons.

What seems to be the problem?
On the stream of the Ashes of Creation move to Unreal 5, Steven was moving around the winter biome, and even though the texture of the snow was of dubious quality, when he entered the cave, the game looked really good. Realistic lighting did a lot of work there. So it's safe to assume that Ashes uses the latest technology to bring real light to the world.

However, when we look at the effects of some skills, they seem very cartoony, and their lighting creates a strange unnatural contrast with the environment. Light doesn't actually disappear completely in an instant, which is why all hard transitions between light and shadow just look bad.

How to fix it?
Based on good quality sketches, Narc in the video showed a good visual rework of Ball Lightning's ability. In this example, we can see that there is no hard contrast between the effect and the world around. More pronounced interactions with the environment make the ability feel more in tune with the environment. The light emitted by the ability behaves naturally, which makes the difference between the darkest and brightest point smaller, which in turn makes the ability appear less shiny. In general, it seems to me that this example is the perfect scheme of what skills in Ashes of Creation should look like.

Video Source:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVb1FagPxQI

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Snekkers

Liniker wrote: »

Snekkers wrote: »

sure, remember that ashes will compete with archage 2, T&L, now chrono oddysey (assuming those games wont be trash, but you have to assume it as a game developer)

If you still have even 0.1% faith that those KR games won't be a total P2W shit show... there's just no hope left for you my brother

Archeage 2.... Kakao... literally released a Worse version of Archeage with NFTs this year that has worse mechanics, no naval, basically they made the game worse... surely they learned (?)

T&L... all the KR Beta testers are saying the game is wallet vs wallet, shit tier combat, bad optimization, and now amazon tester leaks confirm that, just an auto-play game made for mobile

Chrono Odyssey... KR game from a company that made mobile and NFT games, originally announced for Mobile, now changed for "console and PC" Surely not P2W

not even going to mention Pax Dei (plex token p2w) because that's not an MMORPG, its a sandbox with no leveling, no questing, no classes, probably a competitor for Ark 2 or the Dune sandbox survival game

So yea... Unreal Engine 5 trailers are easy to make, good MMOs with good monetization and systems its a whole different story,

Intrepid just need to deliver their game, and not worry about next gen graphics because that's just going to push them to a 2030 release.

bro idc about your opinion, im telling you how it is, you can have game development company and assume that all your competition will not provide.

Liniker

Snekkers wrote: »

bro idc about your opinion, im telling you how it is, you can have game development company and assume that all your competition will not provide.

You are not telling me how it is, because that's not how it is - and as a jahlon fanboy you should understand what target audience is before saying Ashes will compete with console/mobile action RPGs, but I guess you don't care about my opinion so... all good

Selo

TheDarkSorcerer wrote: »

I was extremely disappointed with the way those frost spells looked.Not the function of them, but the visual. The snowy cave we saw in earlier dev streams was beautiful. It looked like a white winter wonderland. The spells we've gotten are icy blue and looked very flat and 2D.

Image above is super flat. The area around those spikes are unaffected.... The ground should be frosted here...

well the grass and ground textures needs alot of work still.
It looks like DnD online from 2006
The gound is very flat and jagged, and all grass sprites looks the same.

Snekkers

Liniker wrote: »

Snekkers wrote: »

bro idc about your opinion, im telling you how it is, you can have game development company and assume that all your competition will not provide.

You are not telling me how it is, because that's not how it is - and as a jahlon fanboy you should understand what target audience is before saying Ashes will compete with console/mobile action RPGs, but I guess you don't care about my opinion so... all good

1. im not jahlon fanboy, i just watch him
2. when you are making a game you cant assume that those games will, most likely it will be like you say, those games will be p2w shitfest, but if one of them wont then its too late to react
3. im not asking intrepid to redo the whole game to match aa2 graphically, but improving effects like this one is not a lot of man power and does not slow development of other features cuz different pl are responsible for that

Uncommon Sense

If it was a solo game i wouldn't be to concerned about the hovering sphere spell effect regarding the 'lighting ball'

But as a massive multiplayer game environment the scenario of an epic mass player battle getting a blue balled screen saver does not appeal to me.

I've seen ball lighting it does not look like a floating plasma ball/snowglobe.

Its a fantasy game so adhering to whatever reality metric does not take precedent of the gaming experience anyway.

The example of ball lighting without the hard shell is far more aesthetically pleasing/less jarring.

How all this effects will impact the battlefield need to be taken into consideration rather than just the single user perspective.

Songcaller

So, you would rather have a load of inverse spiders walking slowly across the battlefield rather than spheres you can dodge?

ShadowVen

As far as the OP point, I disagree. I don't see any issues with the Spells matching the environment. I do see where some spells could visually look better as far as changing the lightning ball bubble or whatever but I don't find that the spells are too cartoony nor effects the terrain/environment negatively from lighting or reflections. The spells showcased are expected to be polished more ofc, but I have no issues right now with what they are showing in the pov of the OP.

Uncommon Sense

Neurath wrote: »

So, you would rather have a load of inverse spiders walking slowly across the battlefield rather than spheres you can dodge?

Neither of those options.

Id rather had orbs of lighting with tethers of electricity ground out forming a radius that can be avoided.

Songcaller

The lightning does tether to the ground right now in the current iteration.

Liniker

Liniker wrote: »

Snekkers wrote: »

sure, remember that ashes will compete with archage 2, T&L, now chrono oddysey (assuming those games wont be trash, but you have to assume it as a game developer)

If you still have even 0.1% faith that those KR games won't be a total P2W shit show... there's just no hope left for you my brother

@Snekkers this aged like fine wine with TL beta lol

Yuyukoyay

Don't care about the cartoony complaint. I'd imagine they are probably showing off the effects on the max settings as well. That's generally just what skills look like when you put an excess amount of detail into them. I personally don't really care how flashy they are as long as they don't blind me in combat. I'd prefer the aoe don't completely block my vision. Also with some consideration for having 500 players on the same screen.

If you overload the graphic requirements less people will be able to afford a machine to even play the game. Most MMO success is always on the accessibility of their game on more hardware. The only way this game will fail is if not enough people play it because they can't afford an upgrade to be able to play the game.

So I'd tone down the spell effects. Make them good looking with minimal cpu and gpu investment. Them looking good is not that important of an issue over gameplay. If a sacrifice is to be made it should always be the graphics taking the hit.

Snekkers

Liniker wrote: »

Liniker wrote: »

Snekkers wrote: »

sure, remember that ashes will compete with archage 2, T&L, now chrono oddysey (assuming those games wont be trash, but you have to assume it as a game developer)

If you still have even 0.1% faith that those KR games won't be a total P2W shit show... there's just no hope left for you my brother

@Snekkers this aged like fine wine with TL beta lol

KEK, there is still AA2 tho, Copium

PherPhur

Mag7spy wrote: »

When i think ball of lightning it should be that, it is like a ball trapped in a sphere

Odd, when I think of ball of lighting I think of a ball, of lightning(arcs), not a ball of lightning inside a ball

PherPhur

Neurath wrote: »

So, you would rather have a load of inverse spiders walking slowly across the battlefield rather than spheres you can dodge?

Apart from not liking how ball lightning currently looks, my biggest gripe about it is that it's not fitting to the difficulty of the game.

It's a slow moving ball with a clear "hitbox" around it right now, hardly AoC worthy, even with 20 on the screen at once it's like counting sheep. Least they could do is remove the ball around the ball so that you have to learn what safe distance is.

If they wanted to do something more than that they could make the ball arc more frequently the closer you are, dealing higher DPS, and lower the further away you are.

daveywavey

i thought the ball looked awesome. Reminded me of some skills I used in ESO, but a little more impressive.

Dygz

I would expect magic effects to seem a bit unnatural.

oOKingOo

What i like about the bottom one is that it doesnt block your view as much. But in the original you see the area of effect better. Since your gonna be zoomed out anyways i think its better to see the area of effect.

Snekkers

i think a lot of points from this post still stands

JC31

What makes the ball lightning look bad to me is that the ball doesn't roll like it should. Looks more like it should be a summoner spell than a mage spell to me. When the ball of lightning drops off the stairs for example it should bounce.

The second example that Snekkers has presented looks more like a mage or wizard spell. The lightning looks more raw and in it's more radical form that a mage or wizard would cast. The light from the spell in Snekkers image also looks more believable.

Arya_Yeshe

Cause some spells a are light blue, that's what brings such impression.

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