Make animation an option

Unknown

Hello,

I really enjoy this game, the mechanic and the display. But most of the time, I play in my bed on my pad, with the light off because of a sleeping wife
When we cast a skill, the animation are lovely, but suddenly my dark room is lighted like I have a christmas tree in it (dixit my wife that have difficulty to find sleep when I play instead of reading…).

The not-so-funny part is that all those sparkling effect are really hurting the eyes and rapidly cause headache and long lasting dot of colors when you close the eye). After 30 min of gameplay in the dark, when I close my eyes, it flashes everywhere and sleep is hard to find for me too (I know we shouldn’t look a screen before going to bed^^)

Do you think it could be possible to :
- Make the skill animation an option : they are nice so I don’t want them to disappear when I play during day time.
- If not animated option activated, replace it with a static picture or just the name of the skill, to get the information of what is casted. Also the time of “casting” will be the same for each player, to avoid quicker combat if not animated.

I've played a lot the past 5 days and my eyes still remember the mStorm "lightning strike". I think about epilectic people too.



Me, my eyes and my wife are thanking you in advance !!!

Have fun !

Unknown

OK,

I see everyone agree with me

Seriously, am I the only one that play in the dark ? No epileptic player on MPQ.

Turn off the animation seems simple to implement and would make a safer, and longer, experience of playing.

Unknown

No no, I believe many agree with you. At least I do. I find current animations to be too... Well, flashy.

I play often when I'm putting our 2 year old boy to sleep. Flickering animations do disturb me then in darkened room. Sometimes I have to stop playing just to check that constant flashing of the screen doesn't bother him. So far it never has, but still.

Unknown

No, you're not the only one to play in the dark, and I was wondering why I had headaches. Now I know

Thanks for your suggestion.

Unknown

Note that now I know the exact lenght of some animation, because i close my eyes when i launch a spell, to re-open them at the end

Thank you for supporting this idea !!!

Unknown

From the recent post where IceX was answering questions (emphasis mine):

Animations - Unlikely, but possible. Turning off animations means that in order to play efficiently, all players will do that and as a result, the amount of work that gets put into creating the animations goes largely to waste. We could do something snazzy where we turn them off after X uses, or after the first time in a battle or something, but that's a bit complex for a relatively small efficiency. With changes to characters removing a lot of the low AP abilities that create much of the ability animation spam, that sort of time factor gets removed to an extent anyhow.

As someone who works in software design and verification for a living, I find this a bit baffling. They are essentially admitting this is a good idea for actual play, but it would negate a lot of work they do to make the game pretty. In my day job, pretty is last, function is first. My only guess is that the artists doing the animations are maybe unable to take on actual coding work, so they would be either out of a job or doing a lot less of what they are good at. Without knowing the makeup of the dev team, it seems more efficient to put effort where your customers (and your bottom line) will get the most benefit. If people are getting headaches, can't play due to epilepsy concerns, or are simply annoyed at all the flashes then they will eventually quit over something that should be a simple fix.

If the dev team is worried about the artists losing work, how about simply having these professionals design animations that aren't so over the top and flashy? Or use a single static graphic that comes on the screen like the animation does, minus all the bright light. Surely there is a solution that makes everyone happy and keeps everyone employed.

Unknown

silent flyer wrote:

As someone who works in software design and verification for a living, I find this a bit baffling. They are essentially admitting this is a good idea for actual play, but it would negate a lot of work they do to make the game pretty.

They also admit with that that the game is created for THEIR amusement and work allocation preferences, not for the players, their satisfaction, fun, value, whatever. They allocate the resources to work on functions they know most people would rather turn off and never see, meanwhile carefully keep away from those on the request list.

No wonder the state we see.

Unknown

I just found out about this game a few weeks ago, and absolutely love it! The only problem is, I'm starting to find that the constant bright flashes are really hurting my eyes/head. I can't play for more than a few minutes without my eyes feeling strained.

I really want to, but I can't see spending any money on a game where I find myself having to close my eyes every few seconds when I know the bright flashes are coming (powers, breaking blocks, rewards, etc.). I love the hero pictures that pop up, but can't stand the crazy bright flashing that comes with them.

Anyone know if there is any hope of turning off animations/flashing, or should I just uninstall the game and move on?

Unknown

I made a suggestion a while back about reducing the amount of flashing after I got a headache and got irritated with the flashes but it wasn't hugely popular neither with the devs nor other players.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3495

Also, something for the eye-burning forum:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5987

lukewin

Pretty sure it would help out with battery life consumption as well.

Lystrata

Axl Lazerwulf wrote:

I just found out about this game a few weeks ago, and absolutely love it! The only problem is, I'm starting to find that the constant bright flashes are really hurting my eyes/head. I can't play for more than a few minutes without my eyes feeling strained.

I really want to, but I can't see spending any money on a game where I find myself having to close my eyes every few seconds when I know the bright flashes are coming (powers, breaking blocks, rewards, etc.). I love the hero pictures that pop up, but can't stand the crazy bright flashing that comes with them.

Anyone know if there is any hope of turning off animations/flashing, or should I just uninstall the game and move on?

This has been requested/posted about many times before. In fact, requests go back to roughly a month after the game first started. I persisted in asking about this for a while, until David gave an update about the matter which was basically "we're aware, but nothing is going to be done about it any time soon". (I think that update is in the first set of Dev Q&A questions - or possibly the answers.)

So yeah... as great as it'd be, don't hold your breath. Player health/comfort doesn't seem to be an issue for them.

(Excluding the small concession of removing the blinding flash from the loading page.)

Zen808

Since the dev's main problem with "optional animations" is the issue with how people would turn them off to facilitate faster gameplay, I would suggest leaving the underlying animation, and just put in an overlay to shield the people for whom the flashes causes problems.

Something like a board with Deadpool in a hardhat holding a sign "Censored for your approval."