Feldon It was hinted after Fan Faire that new Spell Effects and Animations were on the way, and at one point we were listing it for Sentinel’s Fate/Game Update 55. Timetravelling has chipped in with some more info, and actually one of these new animations is available in-game.
It is indeed being worked on. And no, no ETA yet. Can’t even go with our trademarked ‘soon’ yet! =P
Currently, they are brand new spell effects. For almost every spell. For every class. And the effects get bigger and cooler as the tier of your spell rises (aka Master I Rift looks more epic than Apprentice I Rift).
And they look awesome =)
I even have an example of one of the new effects: Get a fury buddy to cast his new Ring of Fire!
No word on whether these spell effects have been future-proofed by putting them on the GPU (your graphics card). Having particle effects run on the CPU has resulted in most raiders and some groupers having to reduce or disable particles just to play the game.
Wicked stuff, looking forward to it, just hoping they wont change the shield bash for tanks
I didn’t even know until the other day when I dropped Ring of Fire and didn’t recognize my own spell. It looks pretty bad ass!
Artist highlight on eq2players.com =)
Yeah, they’re indeed working on spell graphics revamp and it’ll be huge.
(spell system optimization, necro spells will have necro-ish looking, figuring out the situation on screen will be a lot easier without turning spell graphics off, etc)
Yeah… it took me a few times of casting it in a raid to figure out that graphic was really my Ring of Fire. And even then, I figured I had changed a graphics setting by mistake when trying to figure out how to turn off mounts! Very cool looking indeed!
I’ve seen the Fury’s new Ring of Fire animation and I thought it looked cool . . . at first. After a while, though, in a raid of 24 (and all the particles they bring with them), it just gets to be a bit much. And (though I don’t have this problem) some of my guildmates complain how taxing this new particle effect is on their system and that it lags them. They have to turn the camera away, or look up to avoid the lag.
So, although it IS kinda cool, I think they may have gone a LITTLE bit overbaord with this one. I just hope newer animations aren’t as “busy” as this one. I kinda miss the days of EQ1 where you could actualy change the opacity percentage of particle effects. It gets a bit difficult for me, as an assassin, to find the back of a mob (or find it AT ALL) if I can’t SEE the mob due to too much sparkly, shiny, note-y (I’m talking to you, bards) glowy, spell effects all up in my grill, yo!
I love the upgrades, but one thing I can say is most times in raiding we turn down the particle effects. Not because they slow the system down, but because there are just to darn many of them. My screen looks like a four of July fireworks party every time people attack. I love eye candy, but I am worried it will get so much that you won’t be able to see the mob you are fighting.
I guess you can’t make everyone happy. Personally i like the effects. I just turn down the lights in my room, put on some drum and bass and the neighbors start thinking i opened up my own club. oh yeah!!!!. PARTY TIME!!!
I just wish they would have set aside about a half hour to have someone give us the option to increase my font size on all txt. and not just chat. I play on my TV and run the game at 1080p wich make the font so friggin small. It strains my eyes. half the time i can’t read my quest log, and end up buying the wrong items from the broker. 🙁
ROFL @ Icecrash
Yeah, those new sparkly things look good, but can definately get too much during raids. Will probably get worse too if they upgrade the effects for more spells.
Icecrash: You may want to ask around at eq2interface.com, as those things can be fixed with some simple UI modifications.
Thank you Lemilla, I’ll look into that.
I noticed Furnace of Ro looks way awesomer than before!
Can’t wait til Rift gets the upgrade!
Love the idea of new animations but please make them GPU not CPU. I have $800 SLI grafics that are sitting on the sidelines waiting to get a workout while my CPU is having a heartattack. In fact, I would like to see the whole game get an engine upgrade to bring it up to par with todays GPU’s and not so much strain on the CPU’s.
Thanks,
-Avi