Guild Wars 2

So I’ve begun to notice a strange habit I’ve picked up playing GW2. In most other third person games I have my camera set to be roughly behind and a little above my character, usually with what I assume to be about a 10-15 degree downward tilt so I can see over them effectively.

Now enter GW2 with it’s horde of AoE indicator rings, sure other games have had this but it never appeared with the frequency that they do in GW2. These days I find myself habitually tilting the camera down far more so I’m always aware of my footing and am ready to dive out of a red ring at a moment’s notice.

While this is clearly a good practice as I virtually never fall victim to any sort of AoE effect I’ve noticed a downside. That being, that I’ve noticed that I’m more and more susceptible to heavy non-AoE attacks since my habitual camera angle now puts target enemies much higher on the screen, and usually directly under the enemy status bar. With larger enemies I only see about half of them. I simply can’t see those big tell animations because I’m too busy making sure I’m not stepping in an AoE field.

On that note I could really have the best of both worlds if I could move that big enemy status bar a bit higher or somewhere else entirely.

Just wondering if anyone else has noticed this in their gameplay?

yeah, I’ve noticed this too. I tend to look down a lot as well. It really becomes obvious for me during the Lupi fight, but not really anywhere else.

This is actually a common pitfall of many modern RPGs.

Graphics designers spend so much time modeling and texturing an impressive landscape and yet the players end up staring at the blurry floor texture most of the time (Kingdoms of Amalur, I’m looking at you here).

It’s your basic conflict of game design. You have to think of your game as a whole when you start making it.

I definitely spend a lot of time looking down in GW2.

But the same can be said of just about any 3rd person game. The camera in almost every 3rd person game is always above your shoulders, so you’re always going to be looking down at least slightly in order to keep your character in view and see enemies, which are usually going to be below camera level.

GW2 is a particularly egregious offender, though. Between aiming your own AoE (which requires you to click on the ground) and spotting enemy AoE circles on the floor, its not just that your camera is angled down but that you actually have to focus on the ground itself.