why was bard mana song graphics changed? they was so cool now its looks weak as hell.........why cant more important things be changed like targeting more people to play everquest.
An artist reduced all particle effects for all spells and reduce the duration of all effects. Becuase really, many of them were out of hand. An artist won;t be doing marketing, and is sill limited by our game technology. And frankly, changes like this DO have the chance of increasing retention of new players because it gets rid of some of the clutter on the screen at once which can be distracting and overwhelming for new players.
While you guys are at it, can you add some headbanger action while doing some sick Lute riffs mid melody? That would be awesome
I actually agree with reducing the intensity of spell effects, having all particles on max while raiding looked downright silly and completely obscured what was going on, if you were in melee range. The bard music-animations could do with some adjustments though, stabbing yourself in the face repeatedly, is also silly...
Perhaps (if not already in the tutorial) you may wish to add something to it to tell people to /showspelleffects off if they want. Also, adding a check box to Options > Display that has "Show Spell Effects" which does the same as /showspelleffects is my suggestion.
Since we are on the topic of player retention, can we do something about the placement default UI? It's just horrible - I'm sure many are already on there way out the door at this point.
I literally will not play with the default UI. If it was the only option, I'm pretty sure I would quit EQ after playing since 1999.
There's one spell effect that will slow down my computer's graphics and make things choppy for just over a second. Not sure which one it is, but I think it's a necro or SK spell. Screen turns red & black. Being a zerker and in the melee action, this means my whole screen turns. It's the only one I've seen so far that has done this. I guess I welcome a bit of particle reduction in spells. I never had this problem until I started raiding, and a couple of raids I guess you need the settings turned up to see aura things, like Vim & Vigor yellow aura. So I cranked everything up to max, and everything goes through nicely, except for that one so far.
I haven't played with spell effects since like my first 2 months of EQ back in 99. How large they are was always irrelevant, they just look bad. Its like when you are browsing the web and you find one of those old Geocities style web pages made by a 13 yr old with glitter kittens and animated fireballs on it. EQ spell effects always looked outdated, even when the game wasn't.
Hey man. Leave the glitter kittens alone, ok! Agree about the spell effects tho...people really play with that stuff on?
I do miss the vanilla spell effects on cleric buffs. Was always so amazing to see the differences and know you were getting hooked up. I saw someone did a project or something that could put them back in some form or another but avoided it because I know how they'll look without the nostalgia glasses...
When I was new to EQ, I would log in my dad's character who was > level 44 necromancer. IIRC at level 44 you got the 3rd level of spell particles. I would sit around and cast Arch Shielding on myself and just enjoy the show LOL. These days I do not use spell particles, however I feel for the OP.
Why would you risk pissing off current players at the risk of a so called "new player"? When was the last time a legit brand new person played this game and got far enough in to see these "out of hand" spell effects? This isn't 1999 anymore. Modern PCs can handle it
Exactly this, how many NEW players are there. Seriously your target playerbase are the people that love this game from the start. And we love ti for all its faults and terribad graphics, warts and all. Just put in some spell graphics options: Off A Few Some AWSOME IN YOUR FACE SPELL AFFECSPLOSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Please also include the option that turns off fog in LP and the junk in Crystallos. I forget what it was - partdensidty=0 or something like that in the .ini. It even turns off the effects of the pads in zones like Oceangreen.
Can we at least get an option to put the spell particle effects back to the way they were before this change. I understand you believe that new players will benefit from having less particle effects, but that can be taken care of by making the new particle effects the default. I really dislike the change and would love the option of going back to the old effects.
The only use I had for the previous spell effects was to run while spam clicking the grim aura earring, which was marginally fun. If we can't get the original ones back, I'm fine with the reduction in screen clutter, it really was pretty bad in groups. At least this way it's not awful to keep them slightly visible.
