Hey Overwatch Devs,
Most of the posts on this forums are about hero balance, 2-2-2 and gameplay issues, but I’d like to bring up the issue that isn’t talked about a bunch. The visual noise in this game is becoming ridiculous.
Visual noise is the amount of effects, barriers, beams and Ult effects. I’m a professional graphic designer and one of the things I love about this game is the polish on the UI and character design. It’s wonderful.
The visual noise has creeped and creeped over the years to a point where it’s become overwhelming. I think it started with the addition of Moria, I remember thinking her ult looking crazy and blinding. But now you have 2 barriers, mei walls, Sigma’s ult, Syms giant barrier, morias ult, and a flying dragon all going off during a team fight and its insane to look at.
I play on low settings to get better frame rates but it’s still overwhelming. It’s also become hard to watch on Overwatch League.
Don’t get me wrong, I can still follow whats happening, but there must be a better way to add these abilities into the game without so much noise.
Some suggestions that I thought of are;
- Orisas Ult: Lower the opacity on the lines that track players;
- Redesign Barriers so that they have a thicker border and make the middle more subdued.
- Redesign the effects on Morias Orbs and Ults so that they don’t blind you.
Not sure what else, but if others have suggestions here, feel free to reply. I worry that with adding more unique heros will just add to this cluster of noise making the game hard to follow. Thanks and keep up the great work.
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this post is what we need^
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Did anyone use ally hanzo’s dragon to hide in it?
I did many times or i would run along with it so the enemy cant see me flanking.
Yes the visual clutter is getting more and more
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Symmetra’s ultimate needs yet another rework. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have a barrier that is map wide both width and height should see themselves out the door. It’s far worse than anything else for visual clutter.
She needs a new Ult, a dps damage ult
We have enough barriers in this game we dont need gigantic barrier to add to barrierwatch
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Yah, I’ve done the same. Or use it to split the team and be able to reposition without getting noticed. I think lowering the opacity on Dragon would be a nerf.
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Sometimes I don’t know where to aim at, yes the enemy is in front but you can’t see them.
I have problems to distinguish shapes when the contrast is too low and this got worse the addition of more and more visual clutter
I don’t think there is much that can be done other than reducing quality. It is important to be able to see who uses what.
However most of the performance issues in the game are caused by participles bound to the CPU. There is a huge need of being able to reduce the quality of those for performance boost.
This just not going to work. Even now it is hard to tell if you are behind the orisa’s barrier or not when you are too close.
That may seems ok on theory but more transparency usually means less performance. Speaking of this effect, I think it needs completely different visuals since it is so easy to mistake it for a Mercy for both teams.
Good points. I’m not a game dev, so I have no idea how some of these things would affect performance.
I have a hard time seeing what I’m doing swinging as Rein or Brig, with the visual clutter my own weapon makes.
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BTW Moira is spelled OPAF
I played a game earlier tonight, there was so much barrier and ult spam I lost orientation for a moment.
2 Orisa, 2 Sigma, 1 Symm a brig and a moira ulting I didn’t even know what I was looking at. It is like when you go to the beach and get dunked by a decent wave and you don’t know which way is up or down anymore.
Can the transparency or something be changed somehow?