Commando Archive

You know how it is. Flamethrowers and Launcher pistol cause a massive smoke and explosion spam.

Yes, it looks awesome, but its very detrimental to gameplay. Group members suddenly see only smoke, people with low end machines see their FPS drop to single digits..and to make things worse, there's the amazing pet warp issues created by the dozen explosions (pets warp to 100m when the booms get heavy).

So, I would ask for SOE to change these gameplay killing firing animation graphics.

Make the flamethrower's normal shot not be an explosive fireball but rather have the flame graphic of Flame1 (minus the smoke).. make the flame specials either change the color of the flame (from red to red-white).

Launcher pistol just remove the smoke when the gun fires and decrease the explosion's blast graphic to 10% of what it is now. So we will fire it, see the trails streaking towards target, and when it hits see a really small explosion.

Grenades and the cannon/rocket launchers are fine with the big booms and smoke since they are really slow firing weapons.

i really dont want to sound like im flaming you (because im not)

but this game, from the very beginning, has been advertised as being a graphics intensive monster.

i love the graphics they way they are (my opinion of course)

theres an old saying 'upgrade or die'

i will admit when i do use my LP (the only commando weapon that seems to be over the top to me) in my guild hunts i have asked in the past if i am annoying anyone, and i get a resounding NO, they love the different animations and the differend 'spin' it puts on the fight, not just red and green bolts.

but thats just my opinion, you can chuck it out the window if you wish.

I refuse to say I want these graphics changed. I love them all and I'll die from lag before I say lets change em.

Change Um!

Well I have 2 machines that I run SWG on, one a 1.7Ghz and the other a 1.3Ghz.... Neither of these machines are top of the line by any means, but yet they both run fine for me even with the big explosions. The only exception is the 1.3Ghz machine has serious trouble inside cities if there is any population, and particularly if there is fighting going on. I for 1 would not expect the graphics to be changed, however, every 3D game created in recent years has had options to turn down explosion effects etc in order to allow slower machines run smoothly. Well every 3D game but SWG! I do think that people should have the ability to adjust explosion effects just like we can turn off the flora, water, non-collidals, etc.

It does let you tone down the effects. Its in graphics in options I think, a slider that says "partical effects".

Yeah but if you slide that, it does nothing to our explosions.

ah well tough luck! -goes prone and uses normal fire with flamethrower to lag everyone to high hell-

If a graphic should be changed it should be the Heavy Acid Rifle. What does that thing fire anyways? Looks like a brown blur to me.

I've heard of it fireing little sticks that point up, hatchets, paintballs and bbs, and even 1 nut said that every 20th frame of the shot is a cow danceing in a pink tootoo, no one believes him though -ducks just in time to narrowly miss being hit by a cow danceing in a pink tootoo- but I sure as hell know it aint anything to do with acid!

um..for the ignorant in here, the explosions do not 'lag' the server nor your connection. Explosions and smoke hose the frames per second in your machine, ,which are directly tied to your video card and to your system's RAM.

But the FPS is not the biggest issue of them all. its the smoke and explosions covering the whole screen. You cant SEE. Have a commando attack a lair with a launcher pistol and you stand next to lair. on the 2nd or 3rd shot your screen will be completely covered by smoke and explosions, you wont see a thing. That is extremely detrimental to gameplay.

Leave my obscene explosions alone.

This is not the approach for this. The FT/LP graphics should not be changed or toned down in any way, shape or form. In my opinion they are meant to be the way they are and, in all truthfulness, are a big part of being a commando.

What they SHOULD do is add a client-side option check-box in the graphics menu to toggle them on or off. That would be the simplest solution for those involved (well except the devs that need to code it). Those who like the graphics and can handle them can leave them on, those who don't like them can simply turn them off.

F