This change has been so atrocious, I was actually motivated to make an account here to join the chorus of voices complaining about how it makes the Surge Staff Psyker playstyle virtually completely unplayable. The first time I used my staff after the update, I felt like I was watching a remake of the Blair Witch Project with the brightness turned all the way up, and I felt nauseous and headache-y before I’d even finished one mission, and afterwards the thought of playing a second was basically unbearable.
Here’s the thing. I might be able to deal with any ONE of these obnoxious effects (which I still don’t want to do, they’re pretty much all terrible changes)-- that either no one playtested, or the playtester was someone with poor eyesight who’d recently broken his/her glasses-- but all of these? Wavy, shaky cam-like screen, 100% of which goes blurry and out of focus, with the edges of the screen going cloudy? On an ability that was already kinda hard to use since your character holds their lightning-crackling fist right in front of their face while charging it, which already takes up a third of the screen?
You may as well remove the Surge Staff from the game entirely if it’s going to be left like this, because the end result is going to be the same: it’s just completely unplayable. And it needs to be considered that Psykers who use this staff use that ability a LOT for its crowd-control utility, so your screen is going to be a seizure-inducing, headachey, nauseating, epileptic nightmare for more than half the time in any given mission.
Please do something about this beyond merely acknowledge it. I tried turning off or to low every single setting in the same, and while that does make everything look terrible, the Surge Staff VFX aren’t impacted at all. I’m not even asking for a firm date for when it’ll be fixed, just that it will indeed be patched out eventually, because it sucks. It straight up sucks. Especially since I was having a ton of fun being my friend group’s Psyker main, and now my primary staff-- which I put a lot of resources into upgrading, btw-- is completely worthless. Unless I develop some way of playing this game with my eyes closed.
It’s pretty wild to me that countless people have marked this as a high level issue where they literally can’t play more than 1 map without headaches, nausea, sore eyes, or even some cases of epileptic seizures. This patch came out on Thursday. Why wasn’t it reversed immediately with a hotfix?
I’m astonished by it myself. Rarely if ever have I seen patches in games that make it “literally unplayable for longer than like, ten minutes” for a huge chunk of players only to receive such a bland “yeah, we acknowledge some people don’t like it” response while letting the very serious problem linger for days. The VFX team must be really proud of these horrible, nauseating visual effects if they weren’t immediately removed after all these complaints.
For my 2 cents, when I read the patchnotes it said the effect was added to make the surge staff attacks feel more impactful. But even disregarding the negative effect on gameplay this visual effect has, it doesn’t actually feel like it adds anything to the experience of “power” the surge staff has.
What the staff needs is a better sound. Stronger crackling and popping (and deeper, with more bass), and more fizzing and sizzling as if flesh is being fried and melted. Possibly even add a small flame effect on the targets hit by the lightning for like half a second.
Visually the lightning itself(excluding the horrible, horrible blur effect) looks really cool. It needs a more impactful sound to go with it. The sound of a lightning strike, with a deep thunderous after-roar.
Sounds are much more impactful than visuals often times. I used to play Counter Strike back in the early 2000s with a custom sound for one of the pistols, that I took from a Dirty Harry movie. I couldn’t stop using the pistol because it sounded so ridiculously awesome and powerful.
Not to detract from the serious main issue at hand, but , on the topic of overall feeling of nausea.
Another thing that should be addressed and looked at is the warp “aura” that appears around the screen when peril hits around ~30% and will also change colors to dark purple and back to blue when quelled. I don’t know about anyone else, but this is also rather nauseating and extremely noticeable in any blackout mode level and the constant shift of being there and not, really compounds the overall sick feeling.
While most of us can appreciate the effort that has gone into the development to try and make thing feel more life-like, when you try to over engineer something, it just leaves it self open to more issues that can go wrong.
Like it was suggested earlier in the thread, having the ability to toggle some, none or all of the effects sounds like it would go a long way, and wouldn’t add on the the overall general seizure warning.
I really hope this is a priority to remove/revert sooner rather than later. like before Christmas break and radio silence for next two weeks. I am actually getting nausea even when a teammate is using it in Pubs.
The blurryness hurts eyes, and the strobing blue light also hurts eyes.
2 sources of nausea, headaches, and seizures, rolled into 1 weapon.
Technically the Voidstrike staff also has strobing blue light in 1st person when charging, but its only noticeable in darker rooms so its more bearable, but it still hurts my eyes to use.
The shaky cam also hurts eyes. It’s almost like they tried to combine every nausea- and headache-inducing effect into one awful package, and then weirdly call it a “buff” to make the Surge staff feel “more impactful.” The only thing it’s impacting is my sanity and the ability of my eyes and brain to function.
Probably the last thing I’ll say about this, but-- in closing, thanks, Fatshark. You made a headache, a seizure, a migraine, and a stomachache on a stick. All at the same time! That’s what this staff is now. Great job.
Thank you for reverting the surge staff VFX change. Next patch can you also revert the Force Sword block VFX as well? I miss being able to see what’s in front of me while using the Force Sword.
Sadly, they did only half the job - that terrible eyes-pain-inducing blur is still there, so a pair of sunglasses is a must if you want to use Surge. And I’m not joking - really using them and it helps a lot, although already was votekicked for using Surges charge
ps. Never was the one to have problems with flashing lights or other paraphernalia of that kind - that is, before this change no one asked or enjoyed.
Do you have Depth of Field on?
I disabled it, and never had problems with Surge Staff. I main Surge Staff Psyker. Yes some People are more sensitiv for sure. …
But Consider that, since DoF Focuses an Area and makes it maybe worse?
