Why can't we turn off particle effects anymore?

The ability to turn off particle effects has been broken for a while now. Sometimes there are so many particle effects flying about it whites out the whole screen. It makes the game practically unplayable at times. I can't even see my character. There is nothing in the options that can turn it off or disable it. This needs to be addressed and changed because it is totally ruining the game at this point. A developer response would be appreciated.

Good luck.

I don't know about the ability to turn off particle effects being changed, but if there are specific fights outside of the Mushroom in Fordel and Assassin in Seru, let me know and I can take a look at making it less intensive. Only reason I call out the other two is that they are already on my list to look at.

In the meantime, both of those effects only get really bad if more people fail the mechanics since the effect being played there is a fail effect. Having more of your raid avoid those hits will help significantly with how bad that effect gets.

Just fix it where effects can be turned off. Like it used to be? These particle effects also cause a great deal of lag. As an old raider, we always turned them off. A) so we could see what was going on and what we were trying to fight and B) to stop lag. I believe this is what Obana is asking for.

I understand what is being asked for, but ultimately this is a design issue, not code (which being able to not turn down fx would be) Some fx are marked as cannot be turned off. This is primarily for fail effects and warning areas but sometimes when folks get hit with a lot at once this sort of thing can happen. We can fix it design side by throttling how many fx can play based on how many are hit with the fail effect.

Regardless, any change will take time, In the meantime, try not to get hit by those effects and it should at least lessen.

I set particle effects to zero in Options and it helps a lot. Unfortunately, on fights like the Portabellus Shrieker in Fordel Midst, you HAVE to be able to see the particle effect where its puking, so there you have to have the effects visible. I suspect the rock guy in the AC raid also has to have particles on.

I just play with my eyes closed. Shh don't tell my guild!

Oh, I'm sure they know

Back in the day I made a macro with the following command:

/r_particle_priority -1

Haven't used it in ages, so I'm not sure it still works, but thought I'd throw it out there. Problem with it as I recall is that it was too extreme, not letting you see things that were required prompts for some fights.

What makes the Portabellus Shrieker especially bad is the script forces everyone into the pit with the mushroom where it becomes impossible to avoid the fail effect. It hardly even qualifies as a fail effect because it doesn't really do anything except throw particles all over the place. In the posted screenshot the entire raid is eating the effect yet nobody died. The fight is extremely easy, it is just the effect is absurdly laggy to the point of ridiculousness. These kind visual effects that can't be turned off shouldn't exist. There is no reason for it.

In the old days of raiding fail effects were invisible and killed players if they stood in the wrong spot or otherwise did massive damage. People learned and adapted and that was the challenge of being a raider.

If you can't avoid the ae, why get in the pit? It looks like you guys are ducking. Sounds more like the visual still hits you for some reason but the visual is played from the effect landing on you. Are you still getting the damage when the AE hits or does it never hit you and just play the visual?

This whole thread reminds me of this:

Just got a good chuckle out of Obano's screenshot. If you're going to black out people's names, remember to black out both pet names and descriptions as well.

To answer your questions here:

- We get in the pit and duck to avoid an unrelated scripted AE with the text warning "Portabellius Shrieker prepares to flail wildly in a last ditch effort." This only occurs once and at the very end of the fight. Notice the mushroom is at 5% hp in the above screenshot.

- The visual AE doesn't doesn't do significant damage despite it hitting the raid hundreds of times per second. It is just causes a bunch of lag and whites out the screen if too many people are close to the mushroom. We can avoid the visual AE somewhat by standing at a distance until we get to the part of the script where we have to get into the pit. In the pit there is no room to stand at a distance so the lag just becomes ridiculous from all the fireworks going off.

while the lag from the aforementioned effects is soul-crushing no doubt, and hope gets addressed, you don't need to be eating the curses while in the pit. pit is like 20m diameter, u can position raid such that everyone besides mt is far enough to not get cursed pretty straightforwardly

That makes too much sense tho twisty.

We try never to get any of the raid in the pits, because it's a death trap. The shroom spits his attack either in a + pattern or an X pattern. You need enough particles to see which it is and to get out of the green vomit. The last ditch thing we all use the Heartstone miracle, any blockers and death prevents we have, and so on.

Honestly, IMO, the less visual effects that HAVE to be in the raid zones, the better. If there is a way to do something with a buff instead of a visual effect, i would opt for that instead. Between 24 people's spell effects that go off whenever cast, and the size/graphic intensity of the zones, and the mob's scripts (visual effects, constantly spawning mobs, etc) there's just too much lag generated by these to be needed in the raid zones.

@Gninja: BTW, Portabellius is one of the absolute worst offenders for causing lag this expansion. A tweak to him could be nice.

If you haven’t fought the challenge version then you are not aware of what this topic is about.

Indeed we are talking about the challenge version here. The shroom stops doing the X pattern attack after 15% hp so it is safe to get into the pit after that.

@ Twisty. When the fireworks are going it hard to even see the mob let alone position it properly with all the lag.