World of Warcraft’s been making strides in the realm of visual clarity, recently—like upgrading its dreaded swirlies into actual, proper AoE markers. Well, more strides are just around the corner as Blizzard continues to make improvements.
As posted on the public test realm (PTR) forums for the game’s upcoming patch, Ghosts of K’aresh, Blizzard’ll be implementing a proper “spell density” system into the game. As the post explains, spell density currently just adjusts things based on your framerate—if you had a beefy system, you’d still be seeing every fireball and shadowbolt your raid could output.
“The new system provides game designers and artists with improved controls over which spell visuals get displayed and how,” explains community manager Linxy, “So that there can be a reduction of visuals that do not convey useful information to the player about the state of combat.”
Players will be able to choose between “everything”, “reduced”, and “essential”. Everything does what it says on the tin—all particle effects, all the time. Reduced “is tuned for what we consider to be ideal for dungeon and raid content”—likely prioritising important spell information such as beneficial AOE heals and the like, while Essential “is for players who need the most reduction possible”.
There’s a few exceptions to the new system. Your own spell effects’ll always be visible, as will those of NPCs and enemy players, though Blizzard has plans to tweak things based on how PvP functions: “We recognize that PvP combat has different criteria for which visuals are important for combat decision-making.”
This is more-or-less how it works in Final Fantasy 14. Which, given how flashy and over-the-top combat animations in that game tend to be, is more of a necessity than a QoL feature. If I turn on all animations in an Alliance Raid, my computer starts to scream like I’ve trapped a tiny little man in the heatsink.
Still, it works swimmingly there—and has plenty of benefits. Spell designers can get buck wild with their animations without sacrificing performance, meanwhile, encounter designers have more freedom to use visual cues, knowing that anyone playing on a high difficulty’ll be slapping that bad boy on ‘essential’.
There’s room for things to go wrong, though. WoW has a lot more in the way of specs, optional talents, and trinkets to contend with—so Blizzard’ll need to properly tag its beneficial spell effects, which ought to still be present so players know to stand inside them.
The studio’s taking some major swings at the game’s quality-of-life and longevity in recent months, representing a kind of tectonic shift in design philosophy that’s bound to ruffle some feathers. This, however, feels like an unalloyed good.
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