Why are we forced to have Bloom enabled?

I know there is a thread regarding the bloom option already. But my question is more about why the devs thought it was a great idea to not allow you to disable it. Even though it is EXTREMELY apparent that a large amount of players literally can't handle the blurry graphics caused by postprocessing effects due to physical eye strain?

I don't know about you guys, but I for one can't play with any kind of motion blur nor blurred graphics in general without instantly suffering from severe eye strain which quickly leads to headaches. I also don't think it looks good whatsoever with blurred graphics, I mean, what is the point of hand crafted art which looks amazing only for it to be blurred out? It just sounds stupid to me from both perspectives, neither is it good due to eye strain but it also looks completely shitty. Anyone else feeling the same? I would love to hear from people with differing opinions on this matter aswell, would be a great discussion to have.

Anyways, my plea to GGG is to please allow us to disable these extremely annoying effects. There is a reason why you can disable these effects in almost every other game.

Bloom is part of the "git gud" suite of features that ensures a level playing field for you and for those who have really cutting-edge gaming rigs and graphics cards.

See, as a poor shmuck running the game on your dual-core toaster with 8gb RAM and <1 GB graphics card from early 2010, you have it easy.

All you have to do is set your graphics options to "potato" and all the rendering postprocessing artifacts that typically obfuscate poop ground and volatiles, just disappear. All the screen glare, the bloom, that hides the faint pixie-dust glitter of the reflect aura on Cold Lieutenant in the lab. All the backscatter and fog that ambiently occludes ... your feet.

So you, as one of the poors, are enjoying a better Quality of Play than the man who takes his gaming seriously enough to invest in cutting edge hardware? I don't think so, Tim.

Now that you can't simply turn off the intended graphics glitches that make PoE challenging, you must play the way the pros do - by the seat of your pants, blind, and on single-digit FPS. And with one finger constantly hovering over the logout macro.

edit: Sarcasm tags provided for the sarcasm-impaired. Enjoy! :sarcasm: [sarcasm][./sarcasm]

people asking GGG for low graphic setting for years, not happened.

I suspect this setting is forced at the moment so they can collect data on how well it works, instead of just letting everyone switch it off and so learning nothing about how to improve it. The good thing about that rather optimistic view of the situation is that that means that we'll eventually get the option to switch it off, once they're done with all their testing.

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Exile009 wrote:

I suspect this setting is forced at the moment so they can collect data on how well it works, instead of just letting everyone switch it off and so learning nothing about how to improve it. The good thing about that rather optimistic view of the situation is that that means that we'll eventually get the option to switch it off, once they're done with all their testing.

that makes no sense. there is no data to collect from turning bloom on maximum permanently. not having an option to adjust it makes no sense because it is a physical detriment to thousands of players.

all i can observe from this fiasco is ggg made a design mistake and fixing it is low priority for them.

alternatively, now we're nearly a month into league and nothing has been done to rectify it, max bloom could be simply what they want the game to look like i.e get used to it.

The direction of PoE's visuals has started to go south several years ago.
Now it just accelerates down the path of a total clusterfuck.

Delerium was an epiphany of effects over effects on top of effects... Or so we thought.

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Exile009 wrote:

I suspect this setting is forced at the moment so they can collect data on how well it works, instead of just letting everyone switch it off and so learning nothing about how to improve it. The good thing about that rather optimistic view of the situation is that that means that we'll eventually get the option to switch it off, once they're done with all their testing.

If it was an option they can track what people set it to without having to ask them.

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Nicholas_Steel wrote:

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Exile009 wrote:

I suspect this setting is forced at the moment so they can collect data on how well it works, instead of just letting everyone switch it off and so learning nothing about how to improve it. The good thing about that rather optimistic view of the situation is that that means that we'll eventually get the option to switch it off, once they're done with all their testing.

If it was an option they can track what people set it to without having to ask them.

I didn't mean they were trying to find out whether people like it or not. I meant they might be trying to gather technical data - what hardware and software it works well and badly with, what kind of bugs or other technical issues it gives rise to or worsens, etc. Can't find any of that out if people turn it off.

What, this doesn't look good to you?

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Ozxell wrote:

people asking GGG for low graphic setting for years, not happened.

but bloom IS the low graphics setting.

For my personal take, the bloom is fucking awful and causes my left eye to start minorly spasming from eyestrain if I play for an long period of time, and I'm a healthy, active individual so I can imagine it's much worse for plenty of people.