SUGGESTION: Overhaul Battle VFX in PvP/Frontline

There have been many threads recently in General Discussion concerning accessibility issues with PvE VFX. In PvP in general and Frontline in particular, there are specific issues that are currently impairing the mode.

Battle VFX play an important role in the aesthetic impact of any combat mode. However, their primary function should be to communicate information. This is particularly true now that hit detection promotes countering attacks.

In Frontline, many people find that having full VFX creates a visual cacophony that renders the mode unplayable. Unfortunately, reducing VFX to limited removes critical information required for full skill expression.

Specific suggestions:

All LBs and role actions should be visible when using limited VFX. They are the attacks one most needs to see coming.

Limited VFX need a rework so that key attacks do no overwhelm players.

Specific example: Comet (Magical Ranged DPS). As a role action, players need to see this, but the current animation dominates the entire screen. This is complete overkill on limited VFX, particularly given the attack is also telegraphed by standard AoE markers (both friendly and enemy). On limited VFX, all we need are the ground markers.

I leave it to comrades to add other examples.

100% agree.
I don't like playing without effects because I do need them for orientation so turning them off or limiting them hinders me more than it helps. But the effects are so excessive and overbearing that even in CC you can often not see your target if 2 players attack the same enemy.

I wish we had vfx tailored to PvP. Present, readable but not overwhelming or overly obstrusive.

This also goes hand in hand with the new hit detection. Not only do we need less flashy skills, we also need skills whose animation length actually makes sense for PvP instead of badly adapted PvE skills. (I am only talking about the visuals here! I'm not asking for job reworks!)

Esp. because there are skills whose animations are so long that bad ping turns them into snail attacks that need a couple of seconds to resolve after you press the button.

(This makes pictomancer a tad frustrating at times because your fancy animations + ping can mean 3ish seconds of "nothing" until your moogle/madeen actually apply any damage/effect. I can imagine other jobs with lengthy animations share a similar fate.)

I play with limited effects. I can pay attention enough to know whats going on to not see all effects.
Would full effects make me better? Definitely.
Is it cancer. Absolutely.
Perhaps if you could see your silhouette and/or hp bar (above head) always/through effects would help.
Thing that I find sucks about "limited" is: MCH lb on me doesnt show!?

I play with limited effects due to my light sensitivity that triggers migraines, but I still need to step away from the game if a round of Frontlines drags on too long. There's just too much happening to even see what's going on, and in PvP it's much more fast-paced than PvE mechanics. Having effects tailored to PvP would make life so much easier and make it less miserable to play.

Limit breaks that don't leave floor effects are the most obvious culprit and you NEED to see them in order to react, but they're not the sole problem. If for example a MNK is using Rising Phoenix, which is an immediate tell that a burst is about to follow, you won't see it, and your only recourse will be to hear it. In the case of MCH LB, the LB is silent, which leaves the visual cue the only cue you'll get.

And then we get to the real crux of the problem: if we move all those visual cues behind Limited effects, then what is going to be the different with Full effects? Normal attacks not showing perhaps? The better solution would indeed to weed out all the flashy nonsense, which is also a problem in PVE anyway. It was possible to play the game in full effects up to 8 man raids before ShB precisely because the game was still in a state where it wasn't all about "all flash no substance" in pve. Pvp has never been a problem until recently because it just follows pve on visuals, and it's become a real issue in pve as well.

It would be really nice.

I play with full effects (only in pvp) so that I can appropriately react to most things, but they need to tweak stuff like SMN's flashbangs and maybe a bit of AST's celestial revolution where its LB makes all the environment dark, when these things happen multiple times in a very short time frame, it's like someone shining a bright torch in my eyes. The game does not need these constant screen wide flashes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sunhwapark

It would be really nice.

I play with full effects (only in pvp) so that I can appropriately react to most things, but they need to tweak stuff like SMN's flashbangs and maybe a bit of AST's celestial revolution where its LB makes all the environment dark, when these things happen multiple times in a very short time frame, it's like someone shining a bright torch in my eyes. The game does not need these constant screen wide flashes.

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I've been playing AST since 7.1 and the LB as the one using it is completely obnoxious. Blinded for a couple of seconds. It would be nice to have some indication of its extent on the ground rather than not being able to see the battle anymore.

I support this suggestion, too. Although I dislike CC, I usually will do FL for the PVP pass and to level alt jobs so I've turned down all effects apart from myself, and It still gets confusing in a huge battle esp with the comet skills.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CCheshire

I support this suggestion, too. Although I dislike CC, I usually will do FL for the PVP pass and to level alt jobs so I've turned down all effects apart from myself, and It still gets confusing in a huge battle esp with the comet skills.

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Comet has really compounded an already serious problem. It's an auto-choice for magical ranged and a lot of players are running those jobs.

Solidarity bump!

I don't spend as much time doing PVP as I used to because the effects are an overarching problem for me so I can't speak to these issues as much as I can about the PVE ones. Given how much of a problem the visual direction is in PVE, I'm not surprised it's affecting PVP too.

Hard agree on this thread.

I play full effects in CC, and limited effects in FL. Some say you can get used to full effects, but some classes are so obnoxious and just completely blind everyone (astro for example, or bahamut spam).

Most of the time when playing with limited effects I just judge based on whether or not the person is pushing or their buffs/debuffs to understand what they are doing. Considering gameplay is now supposed to be more reactive, effects are more important than before.

The choices made of what is visible/invisible make no sense with limited effects in frontline. The 2 that I can think from the top of my head is:
Dancer LB for example is extremely important to see and gets turned off in limited effects.
Machinist lb animation you can't see in limited effects.

Ideally the game should be playable with full effects and it should be clear what is happening. There is waaaay too much diarrhoea christmas lights.

The MCH not displaying with Limited Effects I swear was only a thing post 7.1. Why it's suddenly not appearing now is a mystery. What else got meddled with though that hasn't to do with VFX, is sound volumes. I rely on sound cues almost as much as vision, in some cases more... and one example of this, and a huge pet peeve right now that comes to mind is DNC LB. The sound was pretty obvious to distinguish prior to 7.1, after that it sounds like any other DNC jingle. I used to be able to avoid pretty much every one in mass pvp but not so much now. Don't believe I've changed any of my settings, this just happened on the advent of 7.1.

Either way, MCH LB absolutely needs to be visible again. If you don't catch the crouch (kinda difficult sometimes when there's a mob obscuring them) it's on you to predict it, like how it was prior to the skill damage timing changes, making the whole tentatively reactive aspects to it moot when using those settings. But I'd also like to remind any wayward devs skimming around these parts to please make sure they don't scrimp on solid sound cues (that would be infinitely more useful than incessant blips and bloops from chat), ta.

ED: additionally, it'd be super cool to be able to selectively mute SFX like... I dunno, the CC hotkey ones, without resorting to one of them forbidden thingies.

Yeah, l support this. l turned effects to limited, so l Can see dragoon's lb better, but then l am having hard time seeing gnb's lb now,lol.

+1 to fix that damn MCH lb vfx. Chiten could also use some vfx adjustments imo.

Bump because with role actions changes this is just even more apparent.

update PLD guardian vfx in pvp no one seems to notice unless they look for that tiny tether vfx