Why is combat in todays MMOs just a clusterfuck of particle effects?

[Lazuli]

Is it really necessary to fill my screen with what looks like blinding flashes of a thousand exploding suns? I don't get it...completely turns me off to most modern MMOs.

[barackopala]

Old games also had a clusterfuck of them, ragnarok online - 3 wizard defense with 1 bard, Vermilag and Storm gust, a few quagmires inbetween and meteor storm was just EEEGGHHHH.

Tibia was freaking messy aswell =P

[Deleted]

Woot? Every seen the Hiberian spells in Dark Age of Camelot?
Their standard nuke spell was a fucking explosion of darkness and light that was displayed on 70% of your screen... their pbaoe spell (mana... something?) was a shell of light that exploded and made the whole screen white, the screen of the caster and everybody that stood in that spell...

Ragnarök Online Lord of Vermilion?


/edit
Found a video about the DAoC Casters I mentioned above... Fun starts at 0:32

[Champagne Supernova]

Not as bad as the example shown above nowadays, but most Korean MMO's lean onto the flashy particle effects on spells and even melee skills. Take a look at Black Desert as an example of this.

[Deleted]

When you're playing alone you want to feel like the spells and effects are totally awesome.
But when many players simultaneously are in combat it becomes a clusterfuck.

What to do about it... Even moba's get clusterfucked.

[axell]

I don't even think there are enough spell fx in today's mmo's. I mean I haven't seen an mmo yet where i can say damn this sure has some nice particle fx. They always tone them down because of the performance impact.

[Lazuli]

I guess the original Guild Wars and WoW were the only ones without clusterfucks lol I thought all MMO back then were not as bad, guess I'm wrong. I also remember the original Everquest as not being bad, I never played above games.

Still it's an issue, especially since MMOs nowadays prefer to be action combat and having a clear visual is even more important but for some stupid fucking reason it's the complete opposite. I may be alone on this but I honestly don't care much about flashy attacks, I'd rather see what's going on.

Rift is the only modern MMO I've found so far that lets me disable other peoples effects (for the most part) and I can actually see everything during a raid or pvp battle. This should be a standard option imo.

I don't even think there are enough spell fx in today's mmo's. I mean I haven't seen an mmo yet where i can say damn this sure has some nice particle fx. They always tone them down because of the performance impact.

GW2 has nice effects but they are way over the top and scale vs the model you are attacking so if you are vs some big boss you can't see shit at all cuz that flame blast proc covers the goddamn screen. Multiple that by 9000 and you get the typical battle in GW2. I had a similar experience in Wildstar. I just don't get it, and these are supposed to be action combat games lol

[Valeron]

woah, something that I agree with Lazuli about.

There needs to be a balance with the effects. It is especially annoying on games that rely on animation tells in combat. The worst for me has been Marvel Heroes. I love the game but damn, I can't see anything when fighting a villain with other people around.