I'm very happy to see the special effects editor on the roadmap, and think it's great timing for Esenthel to raise the bar to its competitors. Hemi mentioned having a discussion on the Special Effects Editor in a previous thread; I think it would be good for this community to share its thoughts, but respect Esenthel's final decision.

My request for a "Special Effects Editor" would be that it focuses on three areas; performance, user-sharing, and functionality improvements to the current shader-pipeline. I think CryEngine 3 is behind now in the DX11 scene, but Unreal is striving forward at a scary pace: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSXyztq_0uM while Uniginie remains heavily noticed thanks to their displacement tesselation (i'm so glad to see this so high on the roadmap too!). Anyway, I think there’s a gap to be filed, and these points are how I'd like to see this realized:

1. Add a new abstraction mode of the Code Editor:"Shader Editor" (re-use some of the hardworked functionality) to support a next-gen shading language. E.G. look into the possibility of not having to compile shaders, rather having it modifying existing shader params with well-designed modular super-shaders where possible.
2. Fill the gaps with EE's current disadvantages. Here’s a scenario: I want to write a custom rim-lighting shader, or add rain effects to the surface of a characters skin. But I don't want to have to re-write a relief, parallax, normal mapping, displacement mapping, skinning shader etc to get it working for my existing game modes. Let's say i'm feeling generous; I want to give it to the community - I want to post a file which people can easily apply, without modification, to their games. Later have a sub-forum just for submissions of various shaders to get lots of nice effects & images of the engine flying around the web quickly.
3. Below, I collected some screenshots of existing technology. There's a large trend for these horizontal node-based GUI shader editors. Looking at advantages and disadvantages, it’s clear to see why this approach has been standardized: easy to implement high-level aspects, easy for people "afraid of code" to adopt, easy for graphics artists to "install" and setup - without visual studio etc, and easy to integrate directly into game worlds. But also there are many disadvantages: In the later images it becomes spaghetti - good OOP code would be much easier to understand than this kind of spaghetti. Therefore: Can the advantages of both be combined? Can we have a high-level visual editor, with the ability to expand the nodes and dive into low-level code/visualizations?
4. Solid Integration to World Editor with Realtime-Profiling - I think this is where Unreal & Cryengine really shine - people can quickly see where their shaders need to be optimized and how heavy they are.
   

Existing Work:

http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/4351/clip.png - Seems okay.
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/6397/capture2omc.jpg - Unreal
http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/pp94/...rSetup.jpg - Unreal again
http://artisaverb.info/Garage/ClockShader.jpg - continued
http://www6.incrysis.com/screenshots/cry..._setup.jpg - CryEngine 3
http://i707.photobucket.com/albums/ww76/...Shader.jpg - Crysis
http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/3734/...aderui.png - Crysis Shader generate UI params
http://www.stereofinland.com/wp-content/...ry3_05.jpg - Crysis Profiler
http://tysoes.com/SFXL.jpg - Shader FX
http://www.creativeobserver.com/img/2199...max_lg.jpg - Helpful Icons
http://developer.amd.com/gpu_images/Full...ey_lrg.jpg - Render Monkey
http://www.keenleveldesign.com/pimp/prot...3/ui02.jpg - another style. But can quickly go over the top:
http://www.keenleveldesign.com/pimp/prot...mbo_01.jpg - does this make any sense to you?
http://www.keenleveldesign.com/pimp/prot...aph_01.jpg - *shudder,surely any code is better than this?*
http://www.hmrengine.com/img/0.7/shot04.jpg - this keeps getting done
http://www.3dworldmag.com/files/2010/12/...mage6_.jpg - SoftImage

That third to last picture looks complicated.

I have never done anything with shaders before. Still, an effects editor would be a very nice addition.

First screen looks nice

Unity - Fusion Shader Editor
I really like this one.
Node based shader tools really has gotten a breakthrough lately it seems.
I hope the effect editor planned isn't only an improved particle editor but extended with node/graphical shader editor tool, this would seriously add alot to the engine value!

My experiences with node-based editors has never been too good. They seem way to confusing and complex, like it would be easier just to code it. Although I suppose my opinion could change with time.

I would prefer a node based editor.