Guild Wars 2

It’s just poor coding on Anets part. There is absolutely no excuse not to allow people to alter the settings. At all.

Ouch bad response!

People with 3 monitors get a huge FOV increase! Are you going to ban them for using 3 monitors so you can preserve the game’s balance?

For those who don’t know, people with a large FOV i.e. 3 monitors get better awareness, for one, but also can fire Siege and ground-target abilities where people without 3 monitors can not even see. I run into this a lot being a 1 monitor user who Anet doesn’t care about. I have to literally put my camera angle to extremes to shoot into some Tower fights where I know if my FOV was better it wouldn’t even be an issue. This and camera distance are my only complaint, and although you say giving people the option to increase FOV leads to poor performance or other gameplay garbage, you allow 3 monitor players full access to that feature while denying it to the rest of us.

I love your strict stance on a lot of things, and the way you guys quip right back at some people’s comments. Put people in their place and what have you. But by not allowing a dynamic FOV, you are telling people, “Buy 3 monitors and a GTX 680 if you want to get a better FOV, but we’re not going to allow it to our mainstream players!”

ChairGraveyard.2967:

It’s not a limitation in the game engine, I know that for a fact. It changes your FOV just fine during boss battles, when changing the aspect ratio, and the illicit FOV camera tool works without any problems from all reports and videos. So sorry but it’s simply a variable in the game’s memory that can easily be attached by a slider except that for some reason it’s acceptable for only a small portion of the player base to have a playable FOV while the rest of us plebes suffer with the garbage FOV in the game currently.

Also, trying to claim it’s impossible to change the FOV in a modern 3D engine is absurd. No triple A developer worth anything would ever have some sort of fixed FOV scheme and it’s proven that’s not even the case in the game right now, so I think we should just lay that whole “argument” to rest (and I have to use that term loosely since in this case the “argument” consists of only verified false information).

@ChairGraveyard (quoting not working again)
maybe its not a problem for a certain amount of players like in a boss fight or some other circumstances but more an issue of scale.
I’m pretty sure Jon didn’t meant client performance but more server load and data transport. Something along these areas.

just guessing though, but like I mentioned: it fits ANets schema of behaviour since BWE1.
And optimization is still an issue too (also since BWE1).
The game performs very poorly even on decent hardware.

So… ANET refuses to offer viable FOV options, but players can achieve higher FOV by simply using a custom gfx resolution or playing in windowed mode. I’m really disappointed by their indecisive response.

Polluxo.4967:

So… ANET refuses to offer viable FOV options, but players can achieve higher FOV by simply using a custom gfx resolution or playing in windowed mode. I’m really disappointed by their indecisive response.

Dont forget that using 3 monitors is also a way to increase the FoV, and its a feature thats supported by Anet, while simultaneously telling single monitor users that an increased FoV would give us an advantage over other players. The actions the company has taken and what they have told us are contradictory, and I would love a response from a dev to clear up this issue, which so far has not been responded to.

@ Proteininja, see it’s calling people ignorant that’s not really helping things. a lot of people have posted actual facts as to why what was said is wrong. Yes the hate is a bit to much (all though i fully understand why they’re upset), but most posts are far from ignorant.

What is the field of view in GW1? While I don’t have any dizzyness or such (hell, I even started playing GW2 on a low res 4:3 monitor!), I remember GW1 being a lot better in the camera department – you could zoom out further and there was more of a sense of space, so that even in large battles I could quickly find and isolate others I was targeting. GW2 feels more “squished together” and like it takes more searching.

I think at this stage we’ve all made our point. I always like more options, but it is what it is folks. Lets politely voice our concerns and hope that we can see some changes in the future.

Just put yourself in Jon’s shoes…here he is trying to explain the issue and convey what anet plans to do about it, and while some of us did explain ourselves with respect, a lot were just mob mentality remarks.

It’s no wonder he hasn’t responded for a while, he’s kitten if he does, kitten if he doesn’t.

I’ve never had issues with FoV in this game, but I can understand why some have. I understand the developer’s decisoin and agree that widening it would sacrifice too much in terms of performance.

Hopefully the nausea issues are indeed caused by camera smoothing and will be fixed.

Respect goes both ways. If ANET won’t respect us enough to fix known health issues, why should we respect their terms of service ?

Seems like most people here don’t seem to understand the difference between using 3 monitors or windowed mode versus artificially increasing FoV in a fixed aspect ratio. They are NOT the same, and all of the issues Jon raised are alleviated when you increase the aspect ratio but are all painfully apparent when you don’t.

Unless you also adjust the vertical FOV to compensate for changes in the horizontal FOV. Most games do this automatically, though making us have to adjust both manually would be sufficient.

Because the reasons don’t matter. The entitlement brigade just wants what they want and don’t like being told no. The reasons are irrelevant, because even if Jon said “if we did this the game will crash every 10 minutes” they would still call him a liar and insist they should include it anyway.

Yes, we would call him a liar in that example. That’s because we have evidence on our side. Specifically, the people using higher FOV setups though multiple monitors, window shrinking or hacks and not having the game crash.

I want the FoV to be higher honestly. I just think that calling BS on a devs reasoning behind not changing it atm is not the way to go about things.

If someone makes a BS argument regarding something I find important, I don’t care who they are, they should be called out on their BS. If they are lying to us, then we need to make it clear they aren’t fooling us and we won’t let them fool anyone else. If they believe what they are saying, convincing them they are wrong might actually change things.

I’d try to do it as politely as possible. But politeness is secondary, calling them out is most important.

Jon pretty much said that the game engine can’t handle a greater FoV.
I can understand that he hesitates to plainly admit that, but that’s pretty much how it is.
“We cannot change it because we cannot change it…”

Yet hackers can. Meaning that even if ANET can’t code it themselves, they still can fix it by licensing the hack off whoever wrote it and integrating it into GW2.

21:32 Truga | http://udba.org/gw2/gw059.jpg
21:33 Truga | http://udba.org/gw2/gw060.jpg
21:33 Truga | http://udba.org/gw2/gw061.jpg
Basically, this is my problem. Screenshot 1 and 2 are ok. They’re both like looking through a line in my large screen. The full screen one is like I’d have to sit ~10 feet away. No go. This isn’t a bloody console.

Polluxo.4967:

So… ANET refuses to offer viable FOV options, but players can achieve higher FOV by simply using a custom gfx resolution or playing in windowed mode. I’m really disappointed by their indecisive response.

Sorry for the double post, but had to respond here.

Keep in mind there’s a difference between you buying three monitors and playing the game that way, and them forcing a wider FoV on every player.

If you buy the monitor, any loss of performance is on you. It’s up to you to have the hardware that can run that, and assumed that you would if you intended to take that route.

If they widen the FoV for everyone, everyone drops in performance, and those that don’t have the hardware to handle it are SOL.

MajorMelchett.6042:

For the time being i’m using a custom res via nvida custom res.

From 1920×1080 to 2194×1080, sure it has small bars at the top and bottom – but it requires no hacks and it doesn’t require window mode, simply select the new res ingame (no breach in any rules whatsoever).

Top pic standard 1080p, bottom pic custom 1080p. Given the choice of the current FOV without bars and the custom res FOV with bars, i’d rather have the latter – in saying this though i have a 32" monitor so the bars mean nothing really.

Thank you for this workaround!
At least now I don’t have to play in windowed mode. Yet another proof that changing the horizontal FoV doesn’t result in errors. (Vertical FoV wouldn’t either but I don’t want to use hacking tools to test this!)

2560×1080
[img]http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r140/enzi666/gw584_zpsc5b8e598.jpg[/img]
2560×1440
[img]http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r140/enzi666/gw585_zps9846b5ce.jpg[/img]

proteininja.5891:

Jon,

Thank you for the game I will playing for the next 10 years.

If you are reading through this thread full of hate and ignorance and you happen to read this post. I hope it restores your faith in humanity.

Peace,

proteininja

I don’t think my post was hateful or ignorant. I find your blanket assumption that the majority of us don’t know what we’re talking about to be ignorant and insulting.

Sickness from FOV is real. ANet thinks that the issue is related to camera smoothing. Maybe their fixing this will correct that particular problem, but I’m not sure it will. As he said “We believe a large number of these cases are not FOV related but rather due to bugs in camera smoothing.” They believe, but they don’t know. It almost sounds like they’re looking at everything that could be the problem but FOV because they don’t want to make any changes to it…not that they can’t.

Besides, the camera smoothing fix does not negate the contradictory nature of his third statement in the OP. People with three monitors have better situational awareness than those without. I’m not saying that I want those people to suddenly lose what they have, but I want to have the option of having it as well, without having to pay for a third monitor.

JonPeters.5630:

I’ve seen a lot of topics on this both here and externally so let me try and address it. The current FOV is going to stay because increasing it, while having some benefits for some players, has too many drawbacks.

1) performance suffers greatly because of how things are built and view distances

2) art suffers because of texture tiling, LOD problems and just general stretching from the fisheye effect.

3) gameplay suffers because positional awareness becomes less necessary in a game where combat is greatly designed around positioning.

There is a a serious camera problem, however, which is making some players nauseous. We believe a large number of these cases are not FOV related but rather due to bugs in camera smoothing. Because of this we are expediting a quick fix to this issue that is currently in testing and should see the light of day in the next build we do.

Jon

Thank you for your response Jon. With respect, I am perplexed that this issue is only now getting some response from ArenaNet, but I’m nevertheless happy and thankful for your post. Now let’s get down to your points:

Your first point:

Anyone who’s ever adjusted the FoV in a moderate to highly detailed game, i.e. Skyrim, knows that adjusting the FoV to a higher setting means some performance hit. How much of a hit that is, would depend on your system.

Giving players the ability to tweak it themselves, puts that responsibility in their hands – they can adjust it as per their system specs and it doesn’t interfere with ArenaNet’s published minimum or recommended system requirements – much like any other graphical adjustment i.e., the quality of shadows, texture details etc.

Would an increase in FoV be crippling for all? I don’t think so, and here is the evidence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYV8dUQmmk4&feature=player_embedded

Your second point:

Art suffers when you turn textures down to low. Art suffers when you turn anti-aliasing off. Art suffers when you have shaders on low, post-processing on none … art just about suffers when you run anything low if you compare it to what the engine is capable of. Again, it depends on the rig you’re using.

Edge-warping (or the fish-eye lens effect) on really becomes noticeable if you push things to the extremes and when you sit a comfortable distance away from a fairly large monitor, lets say 22" and up, this effect becomes less apparent (than for e.g. watching gameplay footage on a YouTube video in a small window).

Speaking of YouTube videos … watch this, and judge for yourself if it is quite so bad – and keep in mind, there are plenty of numbers between 75 (feels more like 60 really) and 90 to play around with: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReSqqL09Fyw

Your thrid point:

So what about people using NVidia 3D surround or AMD Eyefinity? What about giving players with single monitor setups a choice … at all?

I would easily be content with a slight knock on the necessity for positional awareness and have more awareness in total … period. With respect, I seriously doubt this would affect positional awareness in a game-breaking way, so I guess we can agree to disagree on that point.

In conclusion:

Honestly, it feels a pointless to reason about Guild Wars 2’s FoV anymore. If this is the direction ArenaNet’s going to go, then at least allow applications such as Widescreen Fixer (or other community developed projects that aids the adjusting of the FoV outside of the game) to be used by players – at their own risk. In the very least, give us some choice.

Jon, leave it to the players. If they want lower performance, just have a notification in the slider that tells them they may experience issues. Otherwise, players WILL start developing third party methods of addressing this, as it IS a problem that you should be addressing, not the players.

I don’t think anyone is taking your excuses on the matter seriously, especially when playing the game makes them feel sick, and the obstruction to this is “it makes our pretty art look less pretty.” Somehow, I don’t think they care. Performance? Just have a warning about it.

For the players: try widening and constricting your GW2 window. This will expand the area you can see around your character, at the cost of (obviously) losing some resolution. This should at least keep you from wanting to vomit as often.

Who came up with those answers? Because all of the are made up on the spot and there’s no knowledge or understanding behind them. The human fysiology just isn’t designed for a low FOV like this.

Terrant.2903:

If they widen the FoV for everyone, everyone drops in performance, and those that don’t have the hardware to handle it are SOL.

Then don’t make it the same for everyone, make it a slider.

The argument that it’s unfair to some players who opt not to play with a higher FOV is out the window since people with 3 monitors or custom resolutions from their video card settings can have a higher FOV.

Hi Jon.

Let me offer a rebuke.

http://i.imgur.com/czv8b.jpg

That is all.

We can’t see over half the artwork in the game as it sits. If it’s not the FOV then what is the correctly term? Right now the camera view is utterly horrible. If I try to look up I end up looking at my characters rear and can’t see a thing. If I try and look down, say when on top of a keep or tower my vision is cut off. It’s horrible plain and simple. It’s truly the worst thing about this game.

Feranor: Exactly.

Feranor.2053:

Hi Jon.

Let me offer a rebuke.

http://i.imgur.com/czv8b.jpg

That is all.

I guess… nice haircut? Maybe you’re in the battle of the year, and spectacular events are happening all around; I sure as heck can’t tell. But that hair! Bro that’s stylish! Who needs to see your friends nearby when you can stare at that head of hair!

The FOV debate is balance vs. preference.

Letting it be changed means balance suffers, people who choose the warped, fish-eye view will see around corners, etc.

Keeping it the same will mean you will get militant forum posters stating that the FOV is the sole thing which they consider when deciding if they should play a game, and they will try to convince you that everyone they know bases their choices on the same thing too.

Personally, I think balance trumps a few forum threats.

@Jestunhi You can’t argue against a FoV of at least 90.

souldonkey.9534:

Feranor.2053:

Hi Jon.

Let me offer a rebuke.

http://i.imgur.com/czv8b.jpg

That is all.

Way to exaggerate by getting the camera as close as possible and making it look like the issue is far worse than it is. This is not how the game looks at all times so stop pretending it is. Your post is worthless at best and doesn’t help or contribute in anyway other than to advertise your childishness.

Yet, it does look like this when you’re assaulting the walls at a keep, a critical gameplay moment.

I have to say, looking at the ways to change FOV which are within TOS and outside of TOS, I am going to start playing around with each to find a good one. Using a custom resolution just might be the fix I am looking for. That video of 100 FOV vs. 65 FOV is just amazing. Can see the heads of mobs, and see the sky. That’s sweet. Looks 100% better IMO.

souldonkey.9534:

Feranor.2053:

Hi Jon.

Let me offer a rebuke.

http://i.imgur.com/czv8b.jpg

That is all.

Way to exaggerate by getting the camera as close as possible and making it look like the issue is far worse than it is. This is not how the game looks at all times so stop pretending it is. Your post is worthless at best and doesn’t help or contribute in anyway other than to advertise your childishness.

He’s actually not exaggerating anything. Have you tried looking up in this game at all? This is what happens.

Normally you don’t notice it because the game and current tunnel vision FOV force you to look at the ground for circles and targetting, but whenever you have to look up, to aim at a WvW wall or something else, this is what happens.

souldonkey.9534:

This is not how the game looks at all times so stop pretending it is.

This (or similar) is how the game looks if you try to properly see stuff that is taller than 3 meters (10 ft).

Way to exaggerate by getting the camera as close as possible and making it look like the issue is far worse than it is. This is not how the game looks at all times so stop pretending it is. Your post is worthless at best and doesn’t help or contribute in anyway other than to advertise your childishness.

This is not zoomed in. This is how the camera always looks when you’re placing AoE on keep walls looking up.

chumppi.2814:

@Jestunhi You can’t argue against a FoV of at least 90.

Really, why not?

Your post isn’t exactly full of reasons why it would be an improvement and explanations on how the negatives caused by the change could be negated.

Jestunhi.7429:

The FOV debate is balance vs. preference.

There are actual people who get nausea and headaches from this.

I’m pretty sure they dont prefer it and probably just want to enjoy the game like the rest of us.

Jestunhi, what negatives!? The reasons the OP gave are, like pointed out by many in this thread, “not very good answers”. Using that term so my post wont get removed.

Jestunhi.7429:

The FOV debate is balance vs. preference.

Letting it be changed means balance suffers, people who choose the warped, fish-eye view will see around corners, etc.

Keeping it the same will mean you will get militant forum posters stating that the FOV is the sole thing which they consider when deciding if they should play a game, and they will try to convince you that everyone they know bases their choices on the same thing too.

Personally, I think balance trumps a few forum threats.

There are people out there who abuse FOV to get an advantage, but there are lot of us who need a higher FOV to play comfortably. The standard for most people tends to be around 90. I’m not sure how this translates for larger monitors, but most games that support FOV will also scale things accordingly to avoid the whole fish eye view you get in extreme cases.

Maybe they can make it so the FOV slider can’t go past a certain point if you’re playing at a certain resolution. There are resolutions that monitors just flat out won’t support, so if you’re playing on a smaller monitor and try to get the FOV higher, it’ll fail because your resolution doesn’t go far enough for the game to allow it.

I’m sure there are ideas out there that can be implemented that will strike a balance between “performance and balance.”

Not a rant, but my 2 cents:

Xfraze.1704 is right about Fov bound by resolution, to fix most issues/cheating !

1) So is every other soft/hardcode.
(Server Kb/s send that exponential ?)
2) only agree on fisheye effecting art
(users fault not the designers, so does every other softcode)
3) yes the gameplay suffers in some cases, see workaround tricks (paradox)

My current issues on Cam only:
Camera height/distance could be slightly better (isometric),
Improves better combat awareness and fun overall.
Looking up in WvWvW feels to close (Nausea and Claustrofobia)
downedstate zoom in feels to close (Nausea and Claustrofobia)

chumppi.2814:

Jestunhi, what negatives!? The reasons the OP gave are, like pointed out by many in this thread, “not very good answers”. Using that term so my post wont get removed.

Do you think that some people should be able to see around corners while others cannot?

Does that sound like a positive, balance-improving change?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter in PvE, but in PvP it sure does.

:edit:

If they tie model rendering to line of sight to remove any unfair advantage gained by FoV, I have no problem with allowing it to be alterable.

The “balance” argument is a non issue and people here should know it. If they set the max FOV to 110 no one is going to be “seeing around corners” with it. That’s minimal distortion on all but the smallest aspect screens, which are not common at all.

Also, there is no validity to the idea that putting your FOV high enough that it will scrunch a bunch of extra screen into the 20-30 pixel area on the edge of the screen is some sort of “advantage” and is also moot because that is a much larger than 90-110 FOV that people for asking for.

This “issue” with balance doesn’t exist. Further, some players already have larger FOV (triple monitor setups) and you can easily give yourself a larger FOV in windowed mode, and the game itself ups the FOV with no issues during boss fights.

No one is asking for something that would unbalance the game and people saying so are being disingenuous just to argue about it.

Plague.5329:

Jon, leave it to the players. If they want lower performance, just have a notification in the slider that tells them they may experience issues. Otherwise, players WILL start developing third party methods of addressing this, as it IS a problem that you should be addressing, not the players. -snip-

Third party methods have already been developed. Unfortunately using it, even though it doesn’t give you any competitive benefit of significance (or any benefit that you wouldn’t already have if you use Eyefinity or 3D surround), is still a ban-able offence. The only hope now, is for ArenaNet to ease the reins a bit with community developed applications.

Xfraze.1704:

Then don’t make it the same for everyone, make it a slider.

The argument that it’s unfair to some players who opt not to play with a higher FOV is out the window since people with 3 monitors or custom resolutions from their video card settings can have a higher FOV.

This … a thousand times, this. Unless I’ve misunderstood one of ArenaNet’s core philosophies, I’ve always believed that they are a company that promotes inclusion and not exclusion. I also believe that general consensus from players complaining about the constricted FoV in GW2, has always been that some choice (i.e. a slider or numeral input – heck, even a command-line parameter) would benefit all.

I’m going to keep linking this video, because it simply refutes any concerns regarding game-breaking issues when you increase the FoV. I don’t quite agree with what’s being said in the video in terms of “what looks more natural”, and that it was made to look worse because of the zoomed-in nature of the comparison … but it illustrates one thing – a higher FoV isn’t as detrimental as it’s made out to be – not by a long-shot and not even in this extreme example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYV8dUQmmk4&feature=player_embedded

Jestunhi.7429:

chumppi.2814:

Jestunhi, what negatives!? The reasons the OP gave are, like pointed out by many in this thread, “not very good answers”. Using that term so my post wont get removed.

Do you think that some people should be able to see around corners while others cannot?

Some people already can, I fail to see your point?

I sense a feeling of pride here. The team doesn’t want to admit their FOV is a problem. Well, it is. Just look at all the videos and screenshots. There is the proof. The response of Jon Peters feels insulting. Just swallow the pride and admit it needs to be adjusted.

So, ignoring A Net’s callous “no”…

I’ve heard there are ways to improve this besides spending $1000 (or more) on a 3 monitor setup or using a very unauthorized hack. Granted, they cause empty space above and below your game window, but if that’s the only way then you gotta do what you gotta do.

Such as….

The easiest I guess would be to just play windowed, and drag the window borders so that it has a more comfortable view for you.

I’ve also heard there’s a way to do it by changing your screen’s resolution to a wider ratio, and playing in full screen windowed? How does that work, exactly?

Also, I’ve been doing research, and it looks like several companies are on the verge (none out yet that I can see, and no mention of price yet) of introducing ultra wide screen monitors with a 21:9 aspect ratio. The resolution would be 2560×1080. This will probably not give a full 100 degree fov, but it will still be better than you get with the standard 1920×1080 16:9. I’m hoping they won’t be too awfully expensive, and if they are, I guess I’ll just take the plunge and go with a 3 monitor setup.

Heh. This sounds like The Darkness II all over again. This whole “The Devs know better than you” attitude stinks. You used to be alright ANet. What the hell happened to you?

“We believe a large number of these cases are not FOV related but rather due to bugs in camera smoothing”
“The current FOV is going to stay because increasing it, while having some benefits for some players, has too many drawbacks.”

i didn’t expect such ignorance from Anet

1) performance suffers greatly because of how things are built and view distances

My computer is quite low-end. I tried increasing FoV using existing methods (let’s say three monitors.) Had exactly the same performance as with the default tunnel-vision FoV.

2) art suffers because of texture tiling, LOD problems and just general stretching from the fisheye effect.

If implemented properly, there is little to no fisheye. And the art looks BETTER with higher FoV because I can actually see more than just the low-res dirt texture in front of me… I can take in the scenery! Besides, you focus on the center of the screen while playing, the rest is just peripheral vision which isn’t expected to look crystal clear.

3) gameplay suffers because positional awareness becomes less necessary in a game where combat is greatly designed around positioning.

This point doesn’t make any sense. No, really, I have no idea what you’re trying to say. How does a higher FoV make you have less need for positional awareness? The only thing it does in regards to positional awareness is let me more accurately judge distances because I’m no longer looking through a telescope. Gameplay doesn’t suffer, it’s dramatically enhanced. Gameplay suffers under the current FoV setting because I can’t play for more than a half hour without needing a break from the telescope.

There is a a serious camera problem, however, which is making some players nauseous. We believe a large number of these cases are not FOV related but rather due to bugs in camera smoothing. Because of this we are expediting a quick fix to this issue that is currently in testing and should see the light of day in the next build we do.

It’s good to hear you’re fixing camera smoothing. In fact, just let me turn that off completely, it’s a really bad feature to be forced onto a PC game. But you need to realize that camera smoothing is a problem in addition to the low FoV, not instead of it.

There is a very real issue here causing people to be unable to enjoy the game you have created. If no one on your development team has these issues, great, I’m happy for them, really, it’s good to not have these issues. But a lot of people do. And yes, for some of us it is just personal preference. But why not allow that preference? Allowing this choice would be no more harmful to the game than allowing us to change resolution or refresh rate.

> “The Devs know better than you”

This attitude does not go a long way when you provide a service to customers. But we shall see the result when the expansion hits the shelves

Broodix.6053:

Heh. This sounds like The Darkness II all over again.

Thank goodness it’s not quite as bad as that was – I’ll give ArenaNet that. However, looking at Jon’s response, I find it quite ironic that those be the reasons given, yet the game already auto-adjusts your FoV to a higher level during big boss events – which basically renders his first two points completely moot.

So I dunno. I’ve given my lengthy counter-argument a few posts back, but purely considering the boss events and multi-monitor setups, Jon’s response doesn’t seem to make much sense – and I say that, hand-on-heart, with the greatest amount of respect. Perhaps someone can enlighten me, because somewhere, someone has clearly missed the plot.

Ouch. Definitely not the response I was looking for from ANet. I too had a friend quit the game (and get a refund) because he couldn’t play for more than 30 minutes without getting nauseous (which would last for hours).

GW2 is such a great game, and I’ve recommended it to many people (said friend included), but it’s a real shame that some people will not be allowed to enjoy the game because of an unreasonable stance on a very real issue.

Heh. This sounds like The Darkness II all over again. This whole “The Devs know better than you” attitude stinks. You used to be alright ANet. What the hell happened to you?

It does, indeed. The devs of that said that they couldn’t increase FoV because it would cause problems with the tentacle things. And what do you know, people such as TotalBiscuit increased the FoV with external tools and showed off that the tentacles worked just fine at higher FoV settings.

Hey guys. I’m the OP of the first and currently largest thread on camera-related issues: Camera control issues – a documented list and have been following the issue since BWE1.

First of all, thanks Jon for the upfront reply, I appreciate it greatly that you view it as an issue which needs addresing.
For the community: Resorting to personal attacks on Jon is higly unnecessary and counter-productive. Also, tellling him that you know how the game works better than the dev team is horribly arrogant. The fact is that changing just the horizontal FoV without changing the aspect ratio does lead to distortion. The fact is also that changing the FoV obviously would lead to some issues, be it performance or something else, otherwise, we would have seen it changed a while ago.

Which leads me to the second point, which is my personal view on the subject. Let’s see what we know so far:

1) performance suffers greatly because of how things are built and view distances

2) art suffers because of texture tiling, LOD problems and just general stretching from the fisheye effect.

…we are not just limiting it for technical reasons, there are also gameplay implications that we are taking into account that we believe are a core part of the game…

If there was a single reason we might think about looking for a workaround, but because it relates to core issues for 3 of our major departments this is not an easy problem and will remain that way for the foreseeable future.

What this info tells us, combined with the info we have so far (FoV hacks, boss fights, culling, optimization, etc.), is that sadly the GW2 engine is not flexible enough compared to other engines (UT3, Source…) to allow these changes without adding issues, some of which are present even in the current state of the game (culling, texture corruption, LoD).

The fact that the game is not well optimized, and that there is only talk about fixing the mouse smoothing, and not completely removing it, while also taking into account that Jon said that it’s not an easy problem and it’s related to core issues just reinforces my estimation that it’s all very hard-coded with very little engine flexibilty.

If I am to speak my mind freely, I’d say that it’s bad coding, probably due to time/resource constraints.

What does that mean for me personally?
In my topic I’ve talked about a number of points, which all seem to be mutually dependant:

1. Input Lag
2. Negative Acceleration
3. Smoothing
4. Easing
5. Camera behaviour
6. FoV

The first three points are related to game performance, which is not optimized for a wide range of not-high-end machines. The second two points are developer decisions which are not being considered to be completely removed in the forseeable future, probably due to being hard-coded when co-developing for the console. The camera behaviour is being addressed and hopefully it will be fixed. The FoV is also a developer decision, which I have discussed previously.

What this sadly means for me, that in the forseeable future, I will not be playing this game. Be it bad coding, dev decisions, or something else entirely, the fact remains that I don’t feel comfortable playing the game.
The team has put great effort into the hype train, primarily on the art and personal story. The personal story has proven to be a hit-miss scenario, and the technical aspect of the game has also left me wanting. If nothing else, I still have the wallpapers and concept art to put a smile on my face.

They never said it was not flexible enough to add an FOV slider, and multiple pieces of proof say that is absolutely false.

I play TF2 with normal FOV… I know that pros usually change their FOV in shooters because it makes it “easier to aim”… but there isn’t even a crosshair in this game, so why do people keep on nagging them about this. The main issue here is with delays in turning the screen, which is largely due to Anet having optimization issues (IE. not being prepared enough for – “oh hey, maybe making a map size this big might cause huge trouble when it comes to stabilizing FPS for people”), even though you can say they’re trying out new things… but seriously, if the meta for answering question about when certain bug will be fixed for the game is “the fix will be out when it’s ready”, then why da heck was this game released so premature in the first place? That’s something worth spamming about IMO, and not "the FOV needs to be bigger in hopes that I can see more, when in reality you’ll probably be lagging like hell and the “see more” part won’t even matter at that point.

Baxuz.1943:

Hey guys. I’m the OP of the first and currently largest thread on camera-related issues: Camera control issues – a documented list and have been following the issue since BWE1.

First of all, thanks Jon for the upfront reply, I appreciate it greatly that you view it as an issue which needs addresing.
For the community: Resorting to personal attacks on Jon is higly unnecessary and counter-productive. Also, tellling him that you know how the game works better than the dev team is horribly arrogant. The fact is that changing the horizontal FoV without changing the aspect ratio does lead to distortion. The fact is also that changing the FoV would lead to some issues, be it performance or something else, otherwise, we would have seen it changed a while ago.

Which leads me to the second point, which is my personal view on the subject.

1) performance suffers greatly because of how things are built and view distances

2) art suffers because of texture tiling, LOD problems and just general stretching from the fisheye effect.

…we are not just limiting it for technical reasons, there are also gameplay implications that we are taking into account that we believe are a core part of the game…

If there was a single reason we might think about looking for a workaround, but because it relates to core issues for 3 of our major departments this is not an easy problem and will remain that way for the foreseeable future.

What this info tells us, combined with the info we have so far (FoV hacks, boss fights, culling, optimization, etc.), is that sadly the GW2 engine is not flexible enough compared to other engines (UT3, Source…) to allow these changes without adding issues, some of which are present even in the current state of the game (culling, texture corruption, LoD).

The fact that the game is not well optimized, and that there is only talk about fixing the mouse smoothing, and not completely remove it, while also taking into account that Jon said that it’s not an easy problem and it’s related to core issues just reinforces my estimation that it’s all very hard-coded with very little engine flexibilty. If I am to speak my mind, I’d say that it’s bad coding, probably due to time/resource constraints.

What does that mean for me personally?
In my topic I’ve talked about a number of points, which all seem to be mutually dependant:

1. Input Lag
2. Negative Acceleration
3. Smoothing
4. Easing
5. Camera behaviour
6. FoV

The first three points are related to game performance, which is not optimized for a wide range of not-high-end machines. The second two points are developer decisions which are not being considered to be completely removed in the forseeable future. The camera behaviour is being addressed and hopefully it will be fixed. The FoV is also a developer decision, which I have discussed previously.

What this sadly means for me, that in the forseeable future, I will not be playing this game.

If you try to play any game with a computer below the specs your performance will be less than stellar.