Environmental Particles And Elemental Effects

[DiabolusUrsus]

I've seen a few threads discussing these topics, but they seem to have dropped off the board, and I think they're pretty important.

1. Have an option to disable the various ambient environmental particles (with Infested ambience being the most immediately recognizeable.) They look great, add a lot to the atmosphere and I think make a wonderful addition to game immersion. However, they are also inarguably a huge contributing factor that strangles performance on less powerful rigs. I can run fine with them on, but I feel bad to know that some of the friends I play with have less fun on account of lag issues.

2. Have an option to disable the elemental visual effects on melee weapons. As awesome as they are, there are times where I'd like to get a better look at my dagger/sword/axe and its color scheme without sacrificing the indispensible damage output and utility afforded by elemental mods. This would have the added benefit of opening up a market for more complex weapon skins and recolors that would otherwise be obscured or made less appealing by a coating of fire, ice and lightning.

As a subsection of this, please take a look at elemental-damage-induced death animations. As fun as it is to see Grineer and Corpus go into spasms when electrocuted or Infested writhe in agony as they are consumed by fire, it gets repetitive very quickly and as mentioned before can block critical lines of sight. I also miss chopping people in half as frequently with my sword. My proposed solution is thus:

Change the fire death animation changed to burning into ashes. Similar to the way Infested quickly disintegrate, perhaps mixed a bit with Dethcube's Vaporize.

Change the electric death animation to a swift collapse to the ground and keep the spasms. It's fine the way it is, aside from that whole blocking lines of sight thing.

 

Tone down the frost death animation just a bit. It gets people out of the way quickly, which is good, and is simple enough that it doesn't look amusingly melodramatic even after repeated viewing, which is even better. However, it really only looks right when the player is using a high-damage, semi-automatic weapon. I think having enemies simply crumble into ice chunks rather than featuring a huge explosion of ice shards would be just as appealing, and more universally appropriate.

To sum things up, give players more performance-friendly options. Death animations are less exhaustive when they complete quickly and efficiently. Extra dramatic deaths are fine, but more appropriately applied to various Warframe powers.