About Spell Effects' Visual Clarity

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Originally Posted by Thurmnmurmn

This is a tad unrelated but similar. I've got the same issues with some mounts.
Fenrir per example. I love that mount but the particle effects behind him blinds you so I rarely use it.
I agree that we should have a setting to adjust the effects on spells/mounts/gear/whatever else we can think of.

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Oh this I feel so much, a lot of mounts that have particle effects flying directly at the camera feel unusable for me.

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Originally Posted by Connor

But also slightly less seriously like yes it’s ridiculous and weird that every job is dropping satellite beams but can Bard keeps theirs lol? We don’t have anything else that looks very exciting…and I mean we already poison things by pointing angrily, and shoot arrows made of light and darkness, so what’s one more ‘basically a spell’ skill lol? Let us blind everyone else for a change!

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I don't know, I've always been a huge fan of many BRD abilities, notably Pitch Perfect (both visuals and sound, it's bliss), Empyreal Arrow (same), and Refulgent Arrow (likewise).

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Originally Posted by Espon

The problem with spells is that every time they add a new spell or improve a previous one, they gotta make it more visually impressive so that it appears like you're getting stronger. Unfortunately this has just made it impossible to see anything over the years. I remember back in ARR or even SB and not having to reduce spell effects. In ShB I started having to do so in Alliance Raids and Bozja for those outside of party, but these days I cannot play without turning them off for everyone but myself.

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The bigger, more intricate particle effects are also a very lazy way to make skills look like they're being upgraded. Most of the new character animations have no weight and are extremely simple and stiff, so the flashiness is all they have. Even that isn't consistent, because the effects for something like Chaotic Spring versus Chaos Thrust look worse to me on a technical level.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I don't know, I've always been a huge fan of many BRD abilities, notably Pitch Perfect (both visuals and sound, it's bliss), Empyreal Arrow (same), and Refulgent Arrow (likewise).

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I mean those skills do look fine (though frankly I’ll always despise that two out of four of those have separate leg/upper body animations so your legs can be stuck in the Minne twirl while your upper body is stuck in the Burst Shot animation, it’s horrifying and off putting lol).

But compared to other jobs like ‘I am the satellite beam’ DRG, BLM dropping miniature suns, MCH calling in flashy robots, SMN casually manifesting a world-ending primal, etc, outside of using Radiant Encore the aesthetic theme for Bard really seems to be ‘your attacks look as weak as they actually are!’*

Other jobs have similar issues I’d say, like comparing Scholar’s mostly understated animations to WHM flash banging the party every 1.5 seconds, Astrologian drowning everyone in particle effects lol. I refuse to even given Seraphism a pass because of the disgusting glamour overwrite, otherwise it would be pretty cool.
Sage is kinda the same but I’d say Phlegma, Toxicon, Panhaima, have ‘satisfyingly-flashy enough’ animations. Though if it wasn’t for the weird ‘airplane-taking-off’ sound effect I genuinely would not be able to tell when Pneuma goes off, there’s like barely any visual effect lol. The players want parity between each job’s ability to blind its allies! Balance the flashiness!

Obviously there’s the argument to be made that we probably don’t need 24 ‘super flashy blinding everyone’ classes lol. It’s probably a good thing that some jobs have more understated / less over-the-top effects as compared to just making everything the same

* I’m aware Bard is the best of the ranged physical don’t @ me it’s not a literal statement lol

I think this was my first complaint about the ARR beta test, there was that one FATE outside the bar in Thanalan with a big Qiqirn or something, I remember posting a picture of it where he was just completely covered in effects and not visible at all.

I used to have them on full all the time. I didn't really start turning effects off until the 9S tank in the Nier raid, where you have to see which way he's facing for his laser beam and he was always completely obscured by effects.

I originally made macros for turning effects on and off and I would toggle it when I needed to, but now I just have them off all of the time. I just use the macro now for like fireworks or emote effects or something, I think having it off hides those which I hate because I always want to see them.

It's completely absurd that the game is basically unplayable with the default settings on. Maybe somebody will make a mod for smaller effects so maybe Yoshi P will be motivated to give us a more subdued effects option like he was with the new glamour.

I really wish someone made a simplified effects mod, but people are all instead obsessed with taking the flashbangs of the vanilla version and trying to push them into visual nuke territory ala Papachin.

I wrote something about this once. In short, it would be nice to introduce an opacity setting for effects, because you are correct. The biggest culprits of effect clutter are spells that are localized at the center of a target's hitbox. For people who do not want to remove them completely, we ought to be able to dim the effects through other settings.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...ch_as_opacity/

I will admit, it does also make those big effects feel less impactful, when everyone has them. Having Deathflare and Akh Morn as a SMN back in Stormblood felt special. Now that Glare 4's massive, healer effects are huge (like Kerachole being basically a giant bright blue opaque bubble), and my Dancer having Last Dance and Dance of the Dawn, Warrior's Axe Morn every minute...

It became too much for me back in ShB, When I started progging TEA was when I turned down effects because they obscured LL's hitbox and I struggled to see where I needed to go for my proteans. Now things are dramatically worse in this regard. Especially the newer jobs, to be honest. Viper's not awful, but PCT, RPR, and SGE are all just... so bright and obscuring.

Also you can turn down the visual effects of yours and allies abilities in Character Configuration if you wish.


If you raid or do any PVE content, it's highly recommended to turn party member effects down to Limited.

It's unfortunately not just player VFX but bosses as well.
And when the hardest part about a mechanic is not being able to see what the boss is even doing...not exactly good design.