Guild Wars 2

There are issues for the following two situations:

(1) standing in front of a beautiful scene but couldn’t take a nice framed picture because there is a wall right against my back which totally disabled my camera

(2) stuck in a tight chamber / passage or among trees and flowers so that I can’t see anything helpful for in-game movement, even sometimes there is a tiny window on purpose allowing me to peep out but the head of my toon is just stuck right in the middle.

There are probably two solutions:

(1) First Person View: as it is already requested in another thread, I will omit the discussion here. There might exist an issue in the first person view when I look down. I wonder whether or how to display my feet…

(2) Free Camera View, which means, the environmental obstacles do not actually block the positioning of the camera. The camera can move freely, it can see through the wall, but it doesn’t display anything I cannot see from where I am. Those I cannot see will be blacked out or painted with misty water colour. This feature doesn’t need to be supported real time. It can be turned off automatically by the system once my char changes position. The purpose is simply to (a) take nice pictures and (b) figure out the surrounding.

There are a few “technical” issues we may think of right away. I have thought of a few countermeasures as well, but I guess it is too trivial for the moment. So, bear with me for just throwing a stone in the garden. Perhaps we will have better solutions and can skip my poor suggestion.

I think that the camera needs some work too.

I’ve died quite a few times due to being in a cramped space and not being able to see anything due to the camera’s behaviour (apart from a close-up of a leaf, or the backs of my character’s eyeballs). If the camera was allowed to clip into foreground objects and those objects were/became transparent, that would help a lot I think. Sounds like it could be technically difficult to achieve though.

Imo the camera should behave like the one in GW1. No need to add fancy rotating cameras on dead players, automatically doing something if you are too close to something or any other stuff. Just make it clip through too close objects and give the player full control over the camera. Also, add first person view. Simple things like that would make a lot of things easier. I even see things that look like artifacts, if I get too close to a low wall in WvW. The camera jumps back and forth within half a second or less, which creates an awkward feeling.

A few more alternatives, perhaps:

(1) (If in a combat, automatically switched to) a Wide-Angle/ Fish-Eye lens in a cramped space?

(2) (If in a combat, automatically switched to) a bird-eye’s view which shows only the surrounding visible to the player?