Punished for having low graphic settings

[kranur]

If those are needed to play the game, then YES, that's exactly what the game needs.

You should not be able to switch off important effects, no matter how it makes the game run.

It would be like turning off shadows in Thief, or reflections in The Witness.

Well they are and aren't. For random Joe that's playing 2 hours a week and does bunch of quests it doesn't matter.

But yeah I agree thatva warning of sorts could be displayed when entering dungeons or raids and it's disabled.

[Pakheth]

I agree with many in this thread and OP, important fight mechanics visuals should never be optional.

It's painful being punished by things you don't even know exist. Experienced enough of that in my old raiding days when just having the spell effect setting below a specific threshold could make certain effects invisible, like void zones.

Minimum requirements should include enough effects to be able to see dangerous area effects, else it's no longer the minimum needed.

[kaintk]

Hey guys could someone PLEASE help me and even test for yourself! All graphics must be on the lowest possible setting.

So far I have encountered two things which is very disruptive to running a dungeon on-time.

First in HoA, You CANNOT see "Sin Quake" from the Halkas - I was wondering why I was getting one-shot and there is literally no indicator; I only discovered this by watching a streamer and realised holy shit theres a massive easy to see swirl on the floor.

Secondly in DoS, the oil that splurts out of those pipes doesn't show! So I thought fine I can cross.... NOPE got pushed off by invisible oil and I felt so fucking bad the team had to wait for me. Door of Shadows saved my ass but it shouldn't have to be like this.

Please please please if someone knows how to report to Blizzard, please do, I don't think they test on low graphics. THANK YOU FOR READING!

i know its s*** but we are not in classic anymore..

nowaday, a pc who can run the game at least at middle graphic and fine to play dont cost that much, you should check for a middle range pc :x

[valax]

Had a similar thing happen to me back in legion at final boss of blackrook hold.
You know the ghost that during the final fight does the big line of aoe you have to sidestep from?
Well, instead of showing a big line with low settings it showed 2 smaller lines with a gap in the middle. Being the first time there and seeing the safe spot between the 2 aoe lines I would position me in the "safe" spot and die. The group assumed i was trolling them and left.
Only after upgrading my stuff I could learn that I was infact standing into what the others would see as an entirely bad zone so I feel the OP.

The essentials settings tooltip IIRC says it shows effects depending on your fps so if you are playing with very low fps i can see it being the culprit for hiding some effects completely. Try at least to up particle density and projected textures.

[Adoxe]

Isn't that what "Essential" is for? What kind of logic is this? You can't even see the thing that pushes you off or instantly kills you, yet in other dungeons you can see spells that need to be dodged.

Essential is for spell effects and it changes based on your FPS, if your PC is struggling with even the lowest setting then Essential will probably hide even more things than it normally would at which point you might aswell just put it on a regular setting so you don't fuck yourself even more, but it also sounds like you're mainly having issues with Projected Textures, not Particle Density. Put that one on Enabled and you should be fine, it hardly costs any resources.

[yuze]

Well I never expected this horrible response, it's really anti-poor mentality. I bought this laptop for £500 in 2019, I don't really know specs but it has a Ryzen graphics and most importantly I played the trial until level 20 on multiple characters and the game run beautifully at low-to-medium settings, so I thought, Great! I'll sub.
Only after I started getting to newer areas did my FPS start tanking, then I had to settle on lowest. For me, gameplay is more important and fun than graphics, I still think its beautiful at the lowest setting, but the primary issue is I was dying to things that I literally had no knowledge of. I have turned projected textures back on and I am seeing so many AoE textures that I had no idea about before. As a new player I don't even know what the settings meant, I just turned everything low because blizzard allows it, so how could I know that is essential to gameplay?

[Diabloish]

Why don’t you just turn spell textures or whatever the setting for raid mechanics is up a little bit?

I mean them changing the setting name from “medium” to “essential” or whatever you’re asking isn’t going to make it any less taxing on your pc. That setting is for people who literally need everything turned all the way down or their pc won’t run it.

If your pc can’t handle the spell textures being bumped up one notch, then I think you already have your answer on what you need to do.

[Pakheth]

Well I never expected this horrible response, it's really anti-poor mentality. I bought this laptop for £500 in 2019, I don't really know specs but it has a Ryzen graphics and most importantly I played the trial until level 20 on multiple characters and the game run beautifully at low-to-medium settings, so I thought, Great! I'll sub.
Only after I started getting to newer areas did my FPS start tanking, then I had to settle on lowest. For me, gameplay is more important and fun than graphics, I still think its beautiful at the lowest setting, but the primary issue is I was dying to things that I literally had no knowledge of. I have turned projected textures back on and I am seeing so many AoE textures that I had no idea about before. As a new player I don't even know what the settings meant, I just turned everything low because blizzard allows it, so how could I know that is essential to gameplay?

I'm sorry you got so much flak for this. I agree with you. By having the minimum requirements not actually include vital battle information Blizzard is making situations where you can do mistakes without knowing what is wrong. It can easily get you kicked from a group which sucks.

Also to everyone in this thread, the fact that Projected Textures is this vital is not easy for new players to figure out and a lot of you assume everyone knows this info.

[rogoth]

You're punished in any (clearly not any, but almost) game for playing on the lowest settings. It's been like that forever. How can you expect to play on the lowest settings AND have everything showing the same as on higher settings?

unless something has changed with the latest expansion release, this is factually incorrect for WoW, if i remember correctly back in cata they changed some of the system settings relating to ally spell shading and how spell effects work when you view them from allies, then in MoP they made even more changes to the back end that meant that it was actually better to play the game on lower settings (at least from a high end raiding PoV) because the things that were lethal unless avoided were even more pronounced on low settings and got more and more drowned out by visual clutter the higher your settings were meaning that if it was an obscure mechanic that blended into the environment of the encounter area you were more likely to miss it on ultra settings unless you knew what you were looking for and made a conscious effort to avoid it, whereas on lower settings the ground clutter was less and the colour was made apparent it was to be avoided making it easier to see at a glance, and as far as i know, it has remained that way for years, however if people are having issues on lower settings then it's possible blizz have undone some of those historical changes and updated things with this release.

[Pakheth]

unless something has changed with the latest expansion release, this is factually incorrect for WoW, if i remember correctly back in cata they changed some of the system settings relating to ally spell shading and how spell effects work when you view them from allies, then in MoP they made even more changes to the back end that meant that it was actually better to play the game on lower settings (at least from a high end raiding PoV) because the things that were lethal unless avoided were even more pronounced on low settings and got more and more drowned out by visual clutter the higher your settings were meaning that if it was an obscure mechanic that blended into the environment of the encounter area you were more likely to miss it on ultra settings unless you knew what you were looking for and made a conscious effort to avoid it, whereas on lower settings the ground clutter was less and the colour was made apparent it was to be avoided making it easier to see at a glance, and as far as i know, it has remained that way for years, however if people are having issues on lower settings then it's possible blizz have undone some of those historical changes and updated things with this release.

I remember this. You had to tweak your settings to find that sweet spot to be able to see certain effects. Remember a bunch of my guildies struggled with it. They were ofc the guys with the most jacked up rigs.

[Koward]

Well I never expected this horrible response, it's really anti-poor mentality. I bought this laptop for £500 in 2019, I don't really know specs but it has a Ryzen graphics and most importantly I played the trial until level 20 on multiple characters and the game run beautifully at low-to-medium settings, so I thought, Great! I'll sub.
Only after I started getting to newer areas did my FPS start tanking, then I had to settle on lowest. For me, gameplay is more important and fun than graphics, I still think its beautiful at the lowest setting, but the primary issue is I was dying to things that I literally had no knowledge of. I have turned projected textures back on and I am seeing so many AoE textures that I had no idea about before. As a new player I don't even know what the settings meant, I just turned everything low because blizzard allows it, so how could I know that is essential to gameplay?

Don't listen to those who say "just don't use low settings lol". They are obviously special people, if you know what I mean. They try their best.
Low graphic settings should certainly keep the game functional, in all gameplay features. Things you described are bugs, and Blizzard should definitely fix them.

[glowpipe]

people saying that you shouldn't see game mechanics you need to deal with to play the game, because you play on low settings should just stop talking.

Ofcourse there is a lot of things needed to be removed for the game to be run on lowest settings, but gameplay mechanics is NOT one of them. And definately not 1 shot boss mechanics. Those should be prorities over anything regardless of graphical fidelity.

[rogoth]

Well I never expected this horrible response, it's really anti-poor mentality. I bought this laptop for £500 in 2019, I don't really know specs but it has a Ryzen graphics and most importantly I played the trial until level 20 on multiple characters and the game run beautifully at low-to-medium settings, so I thought, Great! I'll sub.
Only after I started getting to newer areas did my FPS start tanking, then I had to settle on lowest. For me, gameplay is more important and fun than graphics, I still think its beautiful at the lowest setting, but the primary issue is I was dying to things that I literally had no knowledge of. I have turned projected textures back on and I am seeing so many AoE textures that I had no idea about before. As a new player I don't even know what the settings meant, I just turned everything low because blizzard allows it, so how could I know that is essential to gameplay?

while i won't be calling your stupid or dumb, you should really take away from this that in future you check thoroughly if the system you plan to use can run the software you plan to run, because based on the little information you have shared here, the cheap 'budget' system you have is relying on the 'built in' graphics processor attached to the CPU in your system, WoW (at least retail client can't speak for the 'classic' client) is not supported by onboard graphics processors, you need a dedicated graphics processor, and will need way more hardware specs for newer games, furthermore, in low density areas you will see better performance than if you are in a built up area with a lot of density for both other players and NPCs then it's going to tax your system resources more meaning that you won't get a true feel for the game until you get into that situation and judge from there, WoW is well know for being poorly optimised as far as many aspects of the game are concerned so even if you meet the 'minimum' specs for the game, you would still be looking to exceed them slightly just to be safe because of how it uses system resources.

[mauserr]

You're punished in any (clearly not any, but almost) game for playing on the lowest settings. It's been like that forever. How can you expect to play on the lowest settings AND have everything showing the same as on higher settings?

Would you prefer that they force projected textures and medium particles? Instead of allowing you to slide them?

Cause that's what you're asking for.

Or you know, Blizzard could just not be a bunch of retards and actually telegraph the bad stuff properly. Just like, I don't know, they do it in Final Fantasy or did in WildStar? The games where bad attacks were clearly telegraphed by a non intensive VFX that was VERY clear on where the line of "die to 1 shot" is. In WoW you have blurry swirly circles with no clear indicator where it exactly ends. A lot of time you see yourself not standing in it, but get hit anyway, because the effect is not a perfect circle but a circle where the outer edges of the effect are faded away completely.



WoW is the one to the right. Both circles are the same, but the WoW one isn't clearly telegraphed that the circle doesn't end where the effect ends, so to be sure you move much farther away, thus losing more DPS than you normally would if it was clearly telegraphed like it is on the left side. The answer to that is WeakAuras or Boss mod addons with a range meter, but it still is an issue that wouldn't need one if Blizzard did their ground effects properly.

[chiddie]

I'd rather they not waste time testing content at stick figure settings for 2007 laptops.

For example I actually have a 2019 HP EliteBook with 16GB RAM and an i7, but no dedicated GPU and I’m also forced, the (luckily) rare times I play WoW onto it to set everything at the minimum details possible in order to try getting at least 30 FPS (thus failing if the zone is dense but at least I can do some WQ or leveling an alt - everything beyond normal dungeoning is impossible -).

I bet that a 2007 PC with 1GB GPU dedicated RAM would run it better than my eons newer PC.

[arkanon]

Or you know, Blizzard could just not be a bunch of retards and actually telegraph the bad stuff properly. Just like, I don't know, they do it in Final Fantasy or did in WildStar? The games where bad attacks were clearly telegraphed by a non intensive VFX that was VERY clear on where the line of "die to 1 shot" is. In WoW you have blurry swirly circles with no clear indicator where it exactly ends. A lot of time you see yourself not standing in it, but get hit anyway, because the effect is not a perfect circle but a circle where the outer edges of it have a lower alpha/opacity than the rest.

But that's not the visual style blizzard want. It's not that they can't, many abilities have had clear telegraph's for years. I'm happy with how it is now, imo it would feel too much like a mobo/arcade game with that.

Thing is, if they went with the hard straight line approach, with the effect inside, players would set it to reduce the effect as much as possible. Same reason people in fps play on low settings except view distance - watch a warzone streamer and notice there is no ground clutter?

Wild star had a VERY different dungeon / raid philosophy, and the game failed horribly, so I wouldn't use them as a shining example in the oven realm.

[chiddie]

You're punished in any (clearly not any, but almost) game for playing on the lowest settings. It's been like that forever. How can you expect to play on the lowest settings AND have everything showing the same as on higher settings?

It’s not about “showing the same”, in this case is “not showing at all”.

This should NEVER be the case, even at lowest settings. Also because dungeons are 99% dodging bad stuff on the floor, if you can’t see part of the stuff, you’ll probably die unless you run only normal/heroic mode (with less bad stuff on the floor and that hits lighter so “who cares if I can’t see the pool”).

[arkanon]

I remember this. You had to tweak your settings to find that sweet spot to be able to see certain effects. Remember a bunch of my guildies struggled with it. They were ofc the guys with the most jacked up rigs.

Jacked up? Are you suggesting the players with the most powerful pcs had to reduce their settings?

[xero5141]

Or you know, Blizzard could just not be a bunch of retards and actually telegraph the bad stuff properly. Just like, I don't know, they do it in Final Fantasy or did in WildStar? The games where bad attacks were clearly telegraphed by a non intensive VFX that was VERY clear on where the line of "die to 1 shot" is. In WoW you have blurry swirly circles with no clear indicator where it exactly ends. A lot of time you see yourself not standing in it, but get hit anyway, because the effect is not a perfect circle but a circle where the outer edges of the effect are faded away completely.



WoW is the one to the right. Both circles are the same, but the WoW one isn't clearly telegraphed that the circle doesn't end where the effect ends, so to be sure you move much farther away, thus losing more DPS than you normally would if it was clearly telegraphed like it is on the left side. The answer to that is WeakAuras or Boss mod addons with a range meter, but it still is an issue that wouldn't need one if Blizzard did their ground effects properly.

I'm not sure why you quoted either of us in your post as it literally has nothing to do with what I (or the other person said) and honestly has nothing to do with the thread either.

- - - Updated - - -

It’s not about “showing the same”, in this case is “not showing at all”.

This should NEVER be the case, even at lowest settings. Also because dungeons are 99% dodging bad stuff on the floor, if you can’t see part of the stuff, you’ll probably die unless you run only normal/heroic mode (with less bad stuff on the floor and that hits lighter so “who cares if I can’t see the pool”).

If you're playing on a PC that meets the minimum requirements you can certainly play above the lowest settings. If you aren't, then it's your issue not theirs.

[Bigbazz]

You're punished in any (clearly not any, but almost) game for playing on the lowest settings. It's been like that forever. How can you expect to play on the lowest settings AND have everything showing the same as on higher settings?

I mean that's not really true, actually traditionally in competitive games the opposite has been true. People using lower graphics settings for higher FPS (lower input latency) and better visibility (less screen clutter, easier to see outlines). His concern is genuine since everything essential to gameplay should be shown, there shouldn't be some graphic setting that without letting the player know just simply makes a part of the game not function.

And really in a general sense turning down non essential spell effects gives you better visibility and higher fps, the issue only happens if essential spell effects are not shown. So that's just something that should be fixed.