Okay let's face it. The SK quality controls have little to NO EFFECT at all EDIT:on some levels. (ty juances?)

Example: Frostbite ( LD map) has a LOT of snowy stuff and all that, which makes people lag. Naturally because it's so graphic heavy you'd expect low quality removes or at the very least makes it less "snowy and misty" so it doesn't cause lag, right? NOPE. Low quality, whether it does anything or not to the map, doesn't do anything at all to it. Instead it makes things like the strike booster trail lines disappear (Does THAT even make anyone lag at all?) and bullets like cryotech to become really hard to spot (A tiny white ball that is pretty much invisible to see in the chaos of LD, or even that misty snow in frostbite). And honestly I don't find that really affecting my computer performance at all.

Let's look at another laggy level, Compound 42.

There's a LOT of fire. Fire from the environment. Fire from the oilers, you name it. Now there's actually one good thing low quality does here: remove glow effect (which can make you lag) from the fire tiles. Now thing is this, there's still something that makes you lag. Also when you have a bunch of toxoilers running around and making toxic oil pools and a little spark of flame you get a massive poison firestorm which makes a lot of lag. Now I don't mind that since I can't think of a way to stop that, but maybe also reduce the environmental smoke and other graphic heavy stuff on low quality

Now my computer can handle most graphics in game on high quality, but the snowy levels and C42 are IMHO too graphics heavy. Especially in Frostbite, a PVP level, it is causing way too much lag, even if that is the first thing I go to after ready room on SK startup.

You might ask me to get a better computer and other things but let's face it, if the graphics are just going to stay the same and not affect performance whether positively or negatively at all what is the point of having quality option at all?

I know this isn't some flash game where quality makes a big difference but please, do something about the environmental effects, mostly misty environments (such as FSC, Ice queen etc) As for levels with lots of cosmetic assets (Compound 42, RRT maybe? etc) I don't know if anything can be done.

I know for a fact that these DO have very noticeable changes in low quality:
Backgrounds (eg Clockwork tunnels)
Bullets (most bullets with fancy effects such as cryotech. Some don't change at all, example expanded pulsar shot)
Some trail effects (Eg. Strike booster, BTB)
Environment mist (Eg. Gloaming wildwoods.Includes the swarm stuff around your screen in shadow lairs I think)(Why doesn't it affect Frostbite's(and maybe other ice levels) mist? I don't mind that snow but the mist has to go)
Chemical bombs' mist(needs further testing)
And maybe some others which I don't know of
These puzzle me as to why they don't get affected
Frostbite mist (as mentioned)
Explosions(mostly those big explosions with that wavy trail thing, maybe remove the trail?)
Some status auras (Eg. curse aura can be ignored since there is that eye sign, poison mist since there are bubbles)
Graphical effects of certain weapons(Remove ice mist on shivermist buster/blizzbreaker helm, poison mist on Venom veiler etc? Also reduce/remove glow effects of say brandish?)
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TL;DR:
I honestly don't think I'm asking for much here, just remove particle effects for different quality settings. If a certain weapon needs to keep the glow or something I'm fine but currently I think that the quality options don't change anything major at all. I know people are probably just gonna tell me "get a better computer or don't play it" or something but isn't that's what low quality is for, to speed performance on weaker computers? I'm not really experienced with Java so I don't know its limits but I think that removing particle effects is not impossible.