Option to turn off weather effects.

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Russell wrote:

We wont ever have an option to disable weather effects as it removes the atmosphere of the environments.

Concerning this phrase i have another reason why it'll be better to do temporary command line option:

You already have config option which make whole game picture very ugly - "texture_quality=7". AFAIK in game this option ca be set ONLY to 0 or 1 and graphics can't be so bad. But editing config allows players to bypass client limitation, and many people use this even having very powerful PC and doing streams - especially on races to take advantage due faster loading and easier to view&react.

I made screnshots with this option for you: http://imgur.com/a/PFxLs

As you see here - whole atmosphere of the game is ruined, not only weather effects (take a look on the rain in the title screen). So why this is OK for you and this can be set and why you don't want to make temporary config or commandline option to turn off weather effects due "removes atmosphere" reason?

Please reconsider this.

P.S. is it hard to check the texture quality variable before appliying it?
maybe something like "if texture_quality > 1 then texture_quality = 1" will help :)

up... i hope Russell not ignores this thread after his last comment.

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Russell wrote:

Thanks for the awesome feedback! Anyway do you think its not frustrating for me?. Never getting the tech to do anything I want. Sigh I should just stop informing people of whats going on.

Yo Russell, like many I have huge issues with the game and am disappointed in the direction it's taking, but if it's worth anything, I have no complaints on the art and sound design department. You guys work with what you have and do your best, and the quality and atmosphere of your work is astounding. Keep it up, I think that the gritty style of the game is half of what makes it what it is.

Since this thread was started, the particles/weather effects problem has only gotten worse. There are now tech-gated bosses.

One of them is the actual final boss, Dominus. The entire background of his boss zone is fog/smoke-lag-particles. Honestly, the "atmosphere" of that fight would be improved by having a background of a ruined city, even if it's just a static picture of one, instead of a dull smoky frames per second killer.

Rain is another absolutely horrendous computer-killer effect. You need to re-do the rain effect if there's not going to be a way to get rid of it outright. You want to know how bad it is? If I push my graphics settings up a bit, so that my baseline fps is 20 in the upper leftcorner of the forest encampment, here's what happens when I add some particles:

Stand at the waypoint, where the waterfall is now visible: lose 30% of my total fps, drop to 13 fps.
Warp to Lioneye's watch, where there's rain: lose 25% of my fps, down to 15 fps.
Stand in Dominus' boss zone next to the smoky barrels where there's a bunch of smoke background: lose more than half of my fps, down to 8 fps and a really, really herky-jerky experience.

If I could quickly find a vaal zone, the blood-smoke effect all over the ground would have a similar effect, too.

I'm all for atmosphere, but more than anything the choice between having a horrible stuttering framerate or pushing my textures down to the minimum is taking away from my enjoyment of the environment rather than adding to it.

EDIT: I'm not trying to be excessively negative here. I love the game's atmosphere, and I think it's a noble goal to try to preserve it as much as possible. I'm just saying that if you sat some artists down with the goal of "try to find something comparable in atmosphere that we can implement without so much strain on our users' computers" you might get a few good ideas. Example: maybe something like bubbling pools of blood instead of blood-mists and blood-spears in vaal zones? A non-smoke background for Dominus? That sort of thing.

Hi,

Switching off weather effects will give different atmosphere to the game - I agree.

Also I do not think smoke/rain should be disables or replaced with static backgrounds.

When I want atmosphere, I will put on my headphones, crank up the volume, put effects higher, and play a softcore character. (Stopped playing HC - since I do not like deaths due to poor performance - so killed all my harcore characters to be able to play softcore only)

Generally I play on my laptop, and unfortunately even high-end laptops do not all have good dedicated graphic cards.

Most big companies accommodate these machines, but I also understand that as a Free To Play Indie developer they do not have all the resources to achieve this in a reasonable time-frame.

This being said - to say NO quite easily for a feature that I think is crucial took me a bit by surprise, and I think was the reason for some of the heated posts.

SO all in all - atmosphere is awesome and should be there - but we would love even more the ability to choose when we play it for the atmosphere or for quick stress release on a lesser machine.

We need an option badly. Since Patch the game is nearly unplayable for me on areas with rain. It was borderline before e.g. on docks. But now its not possible to play in areas with rain for me anymore.

I made a post in a thread in Suggestions before I knew about this thread. I cannot comprehend the logic behind adding Rain as a Hideout MTX while there have been many threads created asking for the option to turn the rain off. Since 1.2, I take significantly longer to load in areas with rain and sometimes get disconnected.

Does rain add to the game's atmosphere? Yes.

Does it contribute FPS drops? Yes.

I would really appreciate having the option to turn it off so I can enjoy this game a lot more. Also, there's already the option to turn off sound (which I feel contributes more atmosphere than graphics do) and we can edit texture quality to well below what the game already offers. People can already ruin the game's atmosphere this way.

And again, this is only asking for an option. Players can keep it on if they want to and turn it off if they want to. Just having the option there harms no one.

Im buying the Rain effect for my H/O

I love Path of exile and playing sience closed beta and have epilepsy and i feel srsly sad when cant off this weather ;/