Obviously, something like barkskin, well, you can see that it's bark. On someone's skin.
This is further complicated when you have some people saying the spell visual effects are OOC rather than IG.
*raises hand* I don't think anyone can see the flashy lights surrounding your character and I think it is a visual indication to the player that the buffs/spells are still in effect on the character. Nor do I think your skin looks like bark or stone when buffed with stone/barkskin.I wouldn't mind if all visual effects are taken off completely, including those on monsters/npc's. Each player has a whole bar of icons they can look at to see which spells are active and when they fade.
I agree on that. Lets remove all flashy wards and spells from people, and just keep it simple.
*raises hand* I don't think anyone can see the flashy lights surrounding your character and I think it is a visual indication to the player that the buffs/spells are still in effect on the character. Nor do I think your skin looks like bark or stone when buffed with stone/barkskin.
I wouldn't mind if all visual effects are taken off completely, including those on monsters/npc's. Each player has a whole bar of icons they can look at to see which spells are active and when they fade.
I have always imagined the visual effects to be IC. However, I have also always wished I could turn them on and off at will. We need to come to a consensus, at least for consistency, on whether the visual effects are IC or OOC. I actually don't care which, but since there seems to be more than a hint of uncertainty on this, I'd like a "final" word on whether the visual effects are IC or not.