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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 )
Could you not just put some type of collision detection on enemy AI that prevents them from occupying the same unit area on the screen? Or give them an outline on the model. Something needs to happen because its pretty bad when you start pushing higher monoliths and arenas.
Looks like…
).
