Feedback talk:User/Jarak/Dynamic Shadows From Spells

I like the suggestion. I think it would be totally cool to have an elementalist cast a fireball down a narrow tunnel in a dungeon and watch as it casts shadows along the way. Even better if it's illuminating some enemies that were previously hidden in the dark down that tunnel, casting their shadows along its wall as the fireball passes. CREEPY!

Unfortunately, I'm guessing the processing hit from calculating the dynamic lighting and resultant shadows of something like an elementalist's fireball will just be too much for some computers. Anet appears to be making an effort to be as all-inclusive as possible by making the game playable on mid-level machines. Guild Wars 3 perhaps 01:02, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

That's true. I know from experience that Everquest II in particula has that problem with dynamic lighting, in most areas enabling it results in a framerate drop from mid 60's to mid 20's; but there are games out there that can pull it off without too much of a performance hit, it's very much an issue of how efficiently it's implemented. If it were possible to enable dynamic lighting via a checkbox in the graphics options then that would hopefully get around the problem by allowing users with low/mid-range computers to decide if it's worth the performance hit. As you said, they're designing it to be as all-inclusive as possible so hopefully that will include high-end systems too. (Like the ones at the Alienware booth at Gamescom that had GW2 playable in 3DSurround!) What you said about it being creepy was my whole reasoning for suggesting this, it makes the spells and such that much more 'real' if you can see them giving off light, instead of just looking they should be giving off light. Just having spells give off light would be good, even if they didn't cast shadows it would still add more 'zing' to the spells; shadows are just the 'icing on the cake' as it were, although I find that the icing is usually the best part.

I can see this from another point of view though, if say, only 5% of the player base can enable an option, what's the point in spending the man-hours and money on creating an option that only 5% of your audience can enjoy. Having said that, in a few years hardware will have moved on, and mid-range machines may have the capacity to pull it off at a reasonable framerate.

Thanks for the input :) Jarak 01:58, 24 August 2011 (UTC)