The skill effects are just too BRIGHT!

Hey guys,
Ive been playing the game for a while (1,339 hrs on record and counting) and I think I have right to say - MOST if not ALL skills are just TOO DAMN BRIGHT! The setting and the world in PoE is pretty dark and grim, many locations are are dark (catacombs, dungeons, Vaal-induced darkness...), and that fact doesnt help at all when contrasted with bright, pure opaque color screen animations. Those bright and often flashes simply make my eyes hurt. Recently had to leave a party after a friend of a friend that was using arc as his main skill joined and started spamming it 24/7.
I took some screenshot of 'main offenders', skills that IMO have the worst animations and should be somehow tweaked (later about that):

Lightning strike
Exploding white light on dark background, when paired with GMP/multistrike/faster attacks/chain flashes worse than a strobe light:


Freezing pulse
When used with LMP/GMP (and its pretty much always used this way) and faster casting is another pure white color explosion:


Storm call
Pretty much the same as lightning strike:


Cold snap
Similar to freezing pulse:


Ball lightning
Yet another animation with pure white color:


Arc lightning
And one more:


ALL those skills are using PURE WHITE color, which really hurts the eyes when set against dark/almost black background. People using some of those skills (lets say, ball lightning and arc) with CoC are almost bound to get epilepsy at some point.

So those were the skills using pure white, opaque color. BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!
Some (all?) fire skills, for change, use OPAQUE ORANGE COLOR, which also flashes pretty violently. A few samples:

Discharge
Never played a discharger myself (playing mostly HC), but the skill effect itself is really, well, explosive:


Flame blast
This one I did use, and I had to stop - trying to close my eyes every time this skill went off was too annoying. Note pure opaque orange color, going as bright as white (AGAIN!) in the very middle). The fact explosion itself takes only 2-3 frames, isnt helping either:


Fire storm
Another fire skill. Note I used it as duellist, so it doesnt show nearly as much as it should - used properly, by a high cast speed, inc. AoE, inc. duration char pretty much FILLS half of the screen with opaque orange, effectively blinding the caster and his unhappy party:


Fire totem
As above. When used by high cast speed char, connected to faster projectiles and GMP covers quite a huge area of the screen with bright opaque orange, going as bright as white:


THERE, listed MOST of the skills I find the worst/most annoying. Before you start yelling at me, that 'its an action RPG, the skills HAVE to be easily visible and recognisable!' - SURE, I agree with that! BUT that doesnt mean, they need to be eye-raping bright! Plus, they shouldnt obscure the vision of whats BEHIND THEM! In high level parties, with 6 people happily spamming their AoEs covering half of the screen its often hard to even SEE whats going ON.
Im not saying ALL skill animations are bad. Here, for change, an example of GOOD skill animation:

Ice nova
The animation is clear, not too bright, half-transparent and those shattering ice pieces are a nice touch:


HOW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM?
In my opinion, the easiest fix to this, would be giving those skills TRANSPARENCY. A perfect sollution would be implementing a slider in options menu, that allows the player to set the transparency they want and find best for their needs (lets say, ranging between 10% and 100% of current transparency, with nominal setting set to 75% or 80%.

Lightning Strike- requires complete remake, the yellowish turning blueish lightnings quality seems like 480p and looks kind of 2D.. meh seen guys spamming it, laggstrike

Freezing Pulse- Could use more realistic physics and brightness could be turned down a bit

Storm Call- suppossed to be like that, it's lighting! have you seen a grayish or transparent lightning? ain't think so,they're suppossed to be bright and it's done right.

Cold Snap- More like pillar of spiked white flash, needs full retouch

Ball Lightning- Don't get the vortexes around em, bet they could remove em and improve gaming performance

Arc Lightning- Another pretty outdated lightning effect. Where's the physics? where's the normal (3D) modelling?

Discharge- Dear Lord! Spamming that one especially with CoC gets people kicked from group,if I play with one of those guys game turns COMPLETELY UNPLAYABLE!! They should do something about it.

Arctic Breath- Have you seen it on CoC with GMP and some nice projectile speed? FPS rapist, I'm telling you, maybe even worse than discharge, doesn't matter you're using celeron or i5.

"

Ward escreveu:

Storm Call- suppossed to be like that, it's lighting! have you seen a grayish or transparent lightning? ain't think so,they're suppossed to be bright and it's done right.

The fact its semi-realistic (tho lightning doesnt hit in straight line) it doesnt mean its done good. Any skill with too much white hurts to watch.

"

Ward escreveu:

Arctic Breath- Have you seen it on CoC with GMP and some nice projectile speed? FPS rapist, I'm telling you, maybe even worse than discharge, doesn't matter you're using celeron or i5.

Sadly I have. CoC+GMP+echo+ball lightning+arctic breath = 5 fps on a frigging HD 7970 (that runs Batttlefield, Bioshock Infinite and DOTA2 on ultra at like 60FPS, but thats a different matter...)

I know its been mentioned before in other thread, but I'd like the ability to reduce all the effects with a simple toggle in the options menu.

One more annoying effect I forgot to mention in first post - bright flashes of light when using reave

Reave
Again, white flashes of light, especially visible on big targets (like those giant skeletons here)


Ive turned down brightness of my screen from 50 down to 35, and its STILL annoying.

Can we PLEASE do something about it? :|

bump for well written.

Nothing? Not even a reply about this not-so-minor issue?