Right, so we've basically gotten to the end of the expac at this point and we're getting the rest of the expac's story in a bit. However, it's important that we go over some of the visual issues that have been caused by not only some areas, but also Visual FX and Visual Clutter that has no reason to obfuscate how people resolve mechanics.
1) Eye Strain: This is something that I've read about before with certain fights this expansion that either rely on very, very bright instances or attacks that are blinding to the point you might as well have thrown a flashbang through the computer. There aren't a whole lot of Trials in Dawntrail, but two actually stand out in particular and an Ultimate.
- Zelenia(Bright Area, Bright VFX, Bright Everything)
- Zoraal Ja(Blue on Blue on Blue on Blue, Bright VFX)
- UMAD(Phase 2 Bright Arena, Flashbang VFX, Yellow on Yellow)
Zelenia is the one that most people complained about given how bright a lot of her VFX and the arena was, and there was even a thread about it at one point that said that it was causing eye strain. The main VFX issue was mostly Shock and Stock Break, since those are constant bright white-blue flashes that happen throughout the fight. There was also the arena being a stark pale yellow, which I assume was done from the lighting team they brought on. There is a thing as TOO much lighting.
Zoraal Ja on the other hand has the issue of too much of one color. We complained A LOT about how P3S(Phoinix, Pandaemonium) was Red and Orange on background, arena, and VFX. This takes it and applies the same principle with cooler colors of blue, making it difficult for people to be able to read at most and sometimes can cause eye strain from trying to discern what mechanic is happening there.
And then there's UMAD. God do I hate UMAD because of the eye strain that this fight gives people. Every Phase except Phase 5 has a Flashbang that essentially covers your screen in bright VFX(Phase 1 and 2) or dark, cascading VFX that is disorienting(Phase 4 Grand Cross). The other thing that's frustrating is this fight technically almost rolls all the issues we've had from Zoraal Ja and Zelenia into one, making it distinctly hard for some to be able to read what's happening.
With this much eye strain, it can make doing long sessions pretty difficult(especially in UMAD's case) or basically just make it impossible for people to do that content because of it. However, that's not the worst of it.
2) Visual Clutter as a "Mechanic"
I'm sure people can note various times since launch of Dawntrail where we've had a lot of visual clutter make it difficult to discern things. We can speak on this in regards to Vanguard's second boss at most, but Trials take it to a different level. The first iteration of this was Zoraal Ja EX, as while Normal Mode had things that were quite readable, there were a few mechanics in Extreme that were hard to discern because they were obfuscated by color blending. We had this issue in P3S specifically due to colors matching that of AoEs among Red and Orange being very hard to look at for extended periods of time. In Zoraal Ja Extreme, there's a mechanic where we have lines that run across AoE and Donut nodes. It gets REALLY hard to read because you have so much on the screen at once it's very hard to parse properly what you're supposed to do, even from a bird's eye view.
Valigarmanda did not have this issue since it properly used different color schemes to be able to convey to the player what they need to solve without it being cluttered by color or VFX. Zelenia had this issue because of Shock in particular, along with the floor being quite bright even with the pink outlines that are shown during Zelenia's tower phase in her EX.
From after Zelenia, the Trials actually present themselves cleanly for the most part.
Then once again, we have UMAD taking this problem to 11 as an Ultimate. In Phase 2, there is a lot of visual clutter caused by the constant changing AoE/Cone/Stack indicator on people's heads, making it very difficult even when running in to be able to discern at times(even with the background being darkened). Phase 3 introduces this at Black Hole, mainly due to Tethers not being clearly defined due to the fact that Chaos and Exdeath are huge bodies that take up a lot of room; Chaos especially. Then, in P4, the visual clutter is the Raidwide Flashbang that tries to disorient you while Kefka starts his Mystery Magic yet again.
The over-reliance on Visual Clutter as a "Mechanic" only adds artificial difficulty to a fight, not real mechanical difficulty.
As a whole though, they did alright this expansion outside of forgetting to take into mind how bright things can be; and I'm hoping when we get into Evercold that we aren't having to deal with these particular two things since it kind of ruins the presentation a little bit.
TLDR; VFX Flashbangs are bad. Visual Clutter is bad when presenting or compiling mechanics on each other. Evercold needs to not have these two things.
Continue reading...
1) Eye Strain: This is something that I've read about before with certain fights this expansion that either rely on very, very bright instances or attacks that are blinding to the point you might as well have thrown a flashbang through the computer. There aren't a whole lot of Trials in Dawntrail, but two actually stand out in particular and an Ultimate.
- Zelenia(Bright Area, Bright VFX, Bright Everything)
- Zoraal Ja(Blue on Blue on Blue on Blue, Bright VFX)
- UMAD(Phase 2 Bright Arena, Flashbang VFX, Yellow on Yellow)
Zelenia is the one that most people complained about given how bright a lot of her VFX and the arena was, and there was even a thread about it at one point that said that it was causing eye strain. The main VFX issue was mostly Shock and Stock Break, since those are constant bright white-blue flashes that happen throughout the fight. There was also the arena being a stark pale yellow, which I assume was done from the lighting team they brought on. There is a thing as TOO much lighting.
Zoraal Ja on the other hand has the issue of too much of one color. We complained A LOT about how P3S(Phoinix, Pandaemonium) was Red and Orange on background, arena, and VFX. This takes it and applies the same principle with cooler colors of blue, making it difficult for people to be able to read at most and sometimes can cause eye strain from trying to discern what mechanic is happening there.
And then there's UMAD. God do I hate UMAD because of the eye strain that this fight gives people. Every Phase except Phase 5 has a Flashbang that essentially covers your screen in bright VFX(Phase 1 and 2) or dark, cascading VFX that is disorienting(Phase 4 Grand Cross). The other thing that's frustrating is this fight technically almost rolls all the issues we've had from Zoraal Ja and Zelenia into one, making it distinctly hard for some to be able to read what's happening.
With this much eye strain, it can make doing long sessions pretty difficult(especially in UMAD's case) or basically just make it impossible for people to do that content because of it. However, that's not the worst of it.
2) Visual Clutter as a "Mechanic"
I'm sure people can note various times since launch of Dawntrail where we've had a lot of visual clutter make it difficult to discern things. We can speak on this in regards to Vanguard's second boss at most, but Trials take it to a different level. The first iteration of this was Zoraal Ja EX, as while Normal Mode had things that were quite readable, there were a few mechanics in Extreme that were hard to discern because they were obfuscated by color blending. We had this issue in P3S specifically due to colors matching that of AoEs among Red and Orange being very hard to look at for extended periods of time. In Zoraal Ja Extreme, there's a mechanic where we have lines that run across AoE and Donut nodes. It gets REALLY hard to read because you have so much on the screen at once it's very hard to parse properly what you're supposed to do, even from a bird's eye view.
Valigarmanda did not have this issue since it properly used different color schemes to be able to convey to the player what they need to solve without it being cluttered by color or VFX. Zelenia had this issue because of Shock in particular, along with the floor being quite bright even with the pink outlines that are shown during Zelenia's tower phase in her EX.
From after Zelenia, the Trials actually present themselves cleanly for the most part.
Then once again, we have UMAD taking this problem to 11 as an Ultimate. In Phase 2, there is a lot of visual clutter caused by the constant changing AoE/Cone/Stack indicator on people's heads, making it very difficult even when running in to be able to discern at times(even with the background being darkened). Phase 3 introduces this at Black Hole, mainly due to Tethers not being clearly defined due to the fact that Chaos and Exdeath are huge bodies that take up a lot of room; Chaos especially. Then, in P4, the visual clutter is the Raidwide Flashbang that tries to disorient you while Kefka starts his Mystery Magic yet again.
The over-reliance on Visual Clutter as a "Mechanic" only adds artificial difficulty to a fight, not real mechanical difficulty.
As a whole though, they did alright this expansion outside of forgetting to take into mind how bright things can be; and I'm hoping when we get into Evercold that we aren't having to deal with these particular two things since it kind of ruins the presentation a little bit.
TLDR; VFX Flashbangs are bad. Visual Clutter is bad when presenting or compiling mechanics on each other. Evercold needs to not have these two things.
Continue reading...