Guild Wars 2

@ Jon Peters: I love this game, sincerely. You have done what I would have once considered impossible for the MMO genre – made a game that is intrinsically rewarding and thus far more accessible to working adults. Thank you for that!

For all the beauty that exists in the game, FoV/camera positioning is a sore spot for me and many other players. I understand there may be technical limitations that could delay a change in FoV or maximum camera zoom, but to flat out deny any future improvement in this arena doesn’t make sense to me.

Without any modification, today, you can use windowed mode to adjust the game FoV. The only restriction is that you have to squash the vertical resolution to gain horizontal field of view. This is suboptimal, but yields some of the desired results.

Alternatively you can spring for an Eyefinity 3x display setup. Personally, I have no problem investing in that, but I fear not every player is financially advantaged to be in the same position.

My problem with Eyefinity is that I can’t find a bezel-less solution for a truly seamless and immersive gaming experience. Do you have any advice on the best setup for a gamer just trying to experience the glory that is the GW2 game world?

I’ve scoured Google for anything that would offer me this experience and come up short each time. Aside from some oil & gas industry specific displays that run between $15-30k a pop I’ve yet to find a triple monitor setup that eliminates gaps between the monitors. I welcome any advice you can offer.

Otherwise, can you please reconsider the decision to make no adjustments to FoV/Camera or at least revisit the subject after the camera smoothing fix is implemented? If it indeed fixes the deficiency that myself and other players underscore in numerous threads then great, but I’m less than optimistic that it will.

This is a part of the game that affects every player and I realize the symptoms may be tied to the engine limitations which means iterations will be a reasonably long time coming, but I think most of the community just wants to know that this is a priority and it will be addressed whether or not that is in the immediate future.

Finally, I’d just like to thank you for the incredible responsiveness you and your team have had throughout launch. I’ve been playing MMO’s since EQ and never before have I seen such a smooth title launch with devoted community interaction to keep us appraised of your priorities. I worry that with all the complaints sometimes it can seem as though your efforts are in vain but there are gamers out there that recognize the complexity associated with MMOs and the long term view that is required to sustain them for years.

Thanks!

What a well put together post.

As for my own two cents, I’d like to start off by saying that I personally am not effected by the game’s current FoV, at least not in a mechanical or playability aspect. I don’t feel all that claustrophobic from playing in such a narrow field of view, and I certainly don’t feel nauseous. Were it not for the threads that have been popping up regarding this issue since launch, I’d likely have never noticed it.

However, after Jon Peter’s recent post, and the outcry from the players that it caused, I was a little… shocked; partially with how firmly the notion of adjusting the FoV was shut down, and partially with how serious some players responded to the news. Out of curiosity, I decided to see what all this fuss was about for myself. As per a few suggestions, I booted up the game, went into my options, turned on windowed mode, and shrunk the vertical height of the window.

The difference was quite noticeable. After toggling back and forth between the native FoV and my own (with the vertical axis shrunk about 1 inch top and bottom), I began to sympathize with the people who have been experiencing a cramped, restricted sensation when using the default FoV. Not only that, but the game world looked -much- more beautiful when I could see it from a natural berth. Instead of feeling like I was staring down tight alleys in Lion’s Arch, I felt as if I was taking in a grand view of the cityscape – as I was, I might add: seeing how I was looking out across the Mystic Forge plaza. Even when I hopped on over to my usual farming spot in Orr, the difference was noticeable. For once, I could look past the various shades of brown and the risen hordes that dotted the landscape to take in the beauty and craftsmanship that went into designing the zone.

I’m not much of one for being vocal about my opinion, or trying to sway others to see things my way, but in this case, I would like to kindly ask ArenaNet to at least consider implementing a FoV slider – even if it be in the long run. I trust John’s word regarding there being issues with implementing such a feature, and understand that if the dev team did go through with making such an alteration it would likely take some time. However, I believe that this is something that would only do good things for Guild Wars 2 in the long run. Those experiencing discomfort while playing will finally be at ease, and the beautiful world that ArenaNet has designed could be given the justice it deserves.

And that’s my piece! =) It isn’t much, but I felt compelled to make my voice heard.

~ Tessana Faethryn

And you thought my post was well written…

@cold
The bezels with a 3-monitor setup can pose somewhat of a problem when a dialogue popup is right at the crossover of two monitors, but with regular gameplay, I hardly notice the bezels anymore. However this is probably purely personal. One thing that helps is making the room you are in dark, and put a light behind the monitors, shining away from you, causing the monitor setup to be lit from the back. Then place the monitors so that the bezels slightly cover eachother, making the black beam between 2 monitors smaller.

Since the room is dark and your monitors are lit from the back, you do not notice the fact that the one monitor is slightly “behind” the other. I use black monitors, this works best imo, in a dark room. There are also monitors with very small bezels but they are probably a bit more costly. I could get a good deal on 2 Dell monitors that pretty much resembled the one I had. The radeon 7970 has no problem at all with this setup with everything on full.

The biggest problem is when the game goes into storymode (personal story dialogue), you only see the torso’s of the characters talking, since in this mode the resolution does not adjust to the 3-monitor setup.

Another problem is when you open up the map: because it is now spread across 3 monitors I find it harder to get a good overview of poi’s and wp’s near my position since you have to scroll almost all the way in before the map starts showing these details: and when you do the area you are actually viewing is pretty small and you have to move the map around a lot with your mouse to see a little more of your direct vicinity.

Off course with this setup there is a pretty huge fish-eye distortion at the far sides of the monitors: but I find this not annoying at all since you are mostly looking at the center for the action: yet I definately use the other monitors to soak in the scenery: it is a much more immersive experience overall. Good thing I don’t do PvP, else I would rule!. The distortion is heaviest when looking up or down, btw: when you look straight it is not very noticable at all (again, only at the very far sides of the 2 outer monitors).

I am thinking of setting up my monitors vertically though: right now the horizontal fov is huge, yet the vertical is still a bit cramped. I am wondering if the vertical fov will also improve when I put the monitors in vertical position, making a resolution of 3600×1920, instead of 5760×1200, I guess it will.

That was an awesome post, thank you! Can you post some pictures and a review of your experience with portrait mode?

I’m debating if I should hold out until new monitors are released but I’m not sure when that usually happens. If it’s at the end of the year or early next, I’d rather wait to see if I can find a 30" or greater lcd with more than a 1600 horizontal resolution. If nothing is coming on the horizon, your post has my interest in Eyefinity piqued again.

Thanks!