Where's Waldo? - Request for a better overview

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Hey there,
It happens frequently that I am dying by a oneshot during Arena or Monolith. While most of them are teleraphed it’s sometimes hard to recognize them. This is because there’s so much going on on the screen. Many enemies, many minions, many fx.

Here’s an example of my necro on a Monolith run. Try to find her on the pic. :grimacing:

https://imgur.com/a/C5kLbKT

Ok, shes in the middle of the screen, I know this, too. But I can’t see her clearly. Depending on your build it can be even worse. Before I respecced my Forge Guard for Smelters Wrath I played with Shield Throw and Forge Strike skilled to maximize summoning Forged Weapons. It’s a pitty I did not make a sceenshot of him in the Arena. But I swear you could not see anything but whirling Forged Weapons and Shield Throw Lava Bursts - NOTHING!

Then !BÄM! dead! The oneshot was telegraphed but I could not see it because it was overlaid by effects and enemies.

Imho this needs improvements.

First I think the enemies come too close to the character. They sit on top of me. I am glad that they can’t block me, but visually they should be at a small distance. Maybe there should be a small circle around the player where enemies can’t stay and are pushed back. With my Necro minions this already works. Could be the same with enemies. This is only a visual thing so this push should not interupt the action of an enemy to not being possibly abused.

The next thing would be to make the telegraphs of heavy attacks more visible. They must be seen even when there are dozens of dozens of creatures on the screen.

My last point would be to make some effects less dominant on the screen. A very good example is the Lightning Nova since patch 0.7.7. Befor the effects were very bright and dominant. Now the effects are more defined, more elegant (dont know how to express this correctly, I hope you get my point). Shield Throw effects on the other side are very gross. Also Warpath.

I have to admit although I did not catch fire with Wolcen at the end this was something these guys did very well. I was aware of everything during the fight.

Improvements in this direction would be nice.

4 Likes
2

Just get more armour and protections! Easy fix.

3

That’s not a fix for visual clarity.

1 Like
4

So I see where this is leading:
Maximize protections and facetank everything. No movement necessary. Start arena, put your skills on autocast and go afk to buy bread. Come back an see “Yeah, wave 233. Died of necrotic… have to get more necrotic protections”. Why even make different classes when there’s only this one play style at the end?

Is this the endgame you are aiming for?

I am sure many people would agree with me that the only things that kills you even with massive protections are the big oneshots. You have to avoid them. They are telegraphed for a reason: show the player that a big hit is incoming.

But it only works when you can see and avoid them.

This also allows squishier builds that require movement skills and awareness.

5

Sometimes I feel like my sarcasm gets launched from a midevil catapult and flies over all the heads below.

2 Likes
6

:thinking::woozy_face: Looks like…

1 Like
7

Likethe fetid corpse of a plague victim being used to soften up an intransigent walled city?

While I agree that there needs to be something done re-visual clarity, there’s also something to be said for not letting yourself get surrounded in a dangerous scenario.

Also, one of the most frequent complaints about PoE is the lack of visual clarity, so it’s not a trivial issue that’s easily solved.

8

Yeah. On a serious bote this time. My short period of time i spemt in wolcen. Combat had clarity in my opinion because it was a mich slower pace than combat gets here in endgame. Yes the combat felt fast and you vouldnt stop moving but there boss skills amd such gave a lot of time for reaction. It was slower for sure. Especially if you take in some of the modifiers that happen in the mof at higher streaks

9

Visual clarity is always extremely hard in these types of games and needs to be designed around from the beginning since everything plays a factor. From player abilities to monster abilities to area color.

One thing I would hope to see is a stronger coloration for “blue” and “yellow” monsters. Many other arpgs use the same trope but something like a shader could be applied to give the monster a blue or yellow glow/coloration.

Ideally, this should also be applied in some sense to boss monsters.

10

Agree. I made a related point recently in discord. Posting a screenshot as it is difficult to replicate the conversation that went on discord.

1920×485

11

Hey all, we understand that this is an issue and this post has inspired me to schedule meetings at least quarterly to discuss ways to help with visual clutter. It’s definitely a challenging issue to solve but it can and should be mitigated as much as possible. Will follow this thread in case anyone has some million dollar suggestions.

Appreciate you all :slight_smile:

12

I have made another topic talking about similar or related problems (and some ideas about it, but probably not “millon dollar” suggestion :slight_smile: ).

We could merge them.

13

straight copy FFXIV’s ground indicators and heavily reduce the opacity of particle effects near them. it works wonderfully in that game

here’s a screenshot with a lot of things going on, but you can still clearly and instantly tell what is going to happen: everybody in the cone and the donut is going to die if they don’t move soon, and the enemy with the horizontal arrows is going to rotate in the specified direction. i don’t really see an ARPG needing the rotate marker but the big visible orange fields are instantly recognizable, and very nearly every enemy AOE marker in the game looks this way

also, go thin out the particle for mage fire nova, for this reason

1 Like
14

I was thinking of exactly this game when I talked about bright red hitboxes.

15

This is exactly what I was thinking of, too. In Wolcen the telegraphed attacks look very similar. Make red or orange for dangerous effects, and blue or green for friendly effects.

This would reduce the immersion. But I would sacrifice immersion for the better visibility. With the current effects it’s hard to see in the heat of the battle and even when you see it the boundaries where an AOE effect begins and ends is not precisely visible.

I have another suggerstion on top of this. Also this is borrowed from Wolcen:
Show me the boundaries of my own AOE effects so I can place them for maximized effectiveness. Press and hold button to show the circle of an effect. Place it where you wanna cast it and cast when releasing the button. For example right now I can’t tell what’s the range of my mages freeze on departure effect or the acolytes rip blood radius. When there are 2 seperate groups of enemies I wanna place my attack that way to hit as many of them as possible.

2 Likes
16

My sentiments exactly.

1 Like
17

Games like Pathfinder: Kingmaker outline the characters when the mouse goes over them. Allies have a green outline and enemies have a Red outline. It is very minor and doesn’t seem to be too imposing. It may not really help much for what the thread is talking about though.

I like the idea of large telegraphed moves having a visual ground effect.

Screen clutter for me is different. I never lose my character, but I lose my mouse cursor. I end up moving in the wrong direction or not at all because I don’t know where I am clicking. :smiley:

18

yup :stuck_out_tongue:

19

in PoE it’s getting a little silly honestly, with now the delirium as well. And as a player you have the influence to make it much worse, with MTX, your build, juicing the maps, going complete potato mode.

I think generally speaking visual clarity in PoE is better than in Last Epoch. Only when you reach the rediculous end game modifiers this stuff really gets out of hand, but I’m not sure if that can ever be fixed.

Wolcen is very slow paced and never puts more than 20 enemies on screen, making it very visible. It should also not be understated that in Wolcen, enemies really pop off the screen. Like the enemies did in Halo, back in the day. Fights were chaotic, but it was always clear where the enemies were. I miss that popping off the screen in LE.

20

Here is a short comparison between Wolcen and LE.

In Wolcen the FX are shorter an more clean. No or very less volumetric effects. While the blood cloud that pops up when my Lich transplants is very dense. The FX on the grund are more 2d in Wolcen while the FX (look at the Gorns) are very dominant and 3D. My Lich sometimes isn’t visible behind these effects.

In Wolcen I can teleport to the point I am sure to hit all enemies, in LE I have to guess where the best spot might be. Also I often have to recast Mark For Death because I miss 2-3 enemies on the edge of the radius (not in the vid, but I swear this happens a lot :slight_smile: )