Guild Wars 2

I don’t understand all these posts saying that the FOV is fine because “it doesn’t affect me” or “I haven’t noticed it”. Just because an issue doesn’t affect you, does not mean that the issue does not exist.

There are already 3rd party hacks that allow you to change the fov, which has alleviated the nausea issue for some people (without performance issues), so I don’t quite understand ArenaNet’s reasoning here.

Also, what about triple-monitor setups and manually resizing the game in windowed-mode?

Baxuz.1943:

Also, tellling him that you know how the game works better than the dev team is horribly arrogant.

I’m sorry, but in this case the players DO know how the game works better than the developer. For the kitten’s sake, there are points in the game where it already increases your FoV, such as dragon lieutenant fights and the penultimate personal story mission. And you know what? It. Works. GREAT. It works great, it looks great, it’s much more playable than the rest of the game.

Liberis.9573:

I don’t understand all these posts saying that the FOV is fine because “it doesn’t affect me” or “I haven’t noticed it”. Just because an issue doesn’t affect you, does not mean that the issue does not exist.

There are already 3rd party hacks that allow you to change the fov, which has alleviated the nausea issue for some people (without performance issues), so I don’t quite understand ArenaNet’s reasoning here.

Also, what about triple-monitor setups and manually resizing the game in windowed-mode?

It’s as if people don’t read the Dev’s comment properly at all here in the forums. John clearly said that the key reason why they haven’t considered increasing the FOV is because of lag, and people can read it as an excuse or what-not… but “LAG” is the bottom line.

If you read between the lines in all their performance post, you can tell that they’re having trouble optimizing the game; it’s not that they don’t want to give players FOV, it’s because their technology is ‘incapable’ of doing so. While you may take that as an excuse to deny the existence of this issue, it’s clearly just the reality of things when it comes down to it; you don’t know for sure why they don’t add FOV, because they’ll never just say “we are not implementing FOV because it will make our game lag”. This is what happens when game developers forget how to simply “tell the public the simple truth”. Comparing the game to HL or Quake is simply a poor response – that has clearly made people think that Anet is making excuses rather than stating facts.

I trust what they say, but it’s not like I have a choice other than to voice out my single opinion like what everyone else is doing and hope for the best…. kudos to the management team in Anet^.

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.

I share your view and experienced most of the mentioned issues in your post myself.
Followed the game since Comicom 2010, participated in every BWE/stresstest and played since headstart…
I came to the same conclusion; that technical limitations, questionable coding and some rock solid design decisions (I don’t like) are what made changes which will suffice to make the game playable (aka fun) for me very very unlikely…

Just like you I stopped playing.
I even uninstalled the game a couple of days ago because of too many issues and disappointments. Honestly, I gave up on the game.

So sad.

Can we atleast normalize camera distance between the races?

I’m tired of feeling claustrophobic on my asura after playing any of the 4 other races. Norn/Charr can see EVERYTHING. I almost feel like deleting any of my asura char’s and starting over, it’s ridiculous.

10-15% would make a huge difference……..

Habanero.9384:

I share your view and experienced most of the mentioned issues in your post myself.
Followed the game since Comicom 2010, participated in every BWE/stresstest and played since headstart…
I came to the same conclusion; that technical limitations, questionable coding and some rock solid design decisions (I don’t like) are what made changes which will suffice to make the game playable (aka fun) for me very very unlikely…

Just like you I stopped playing.
I even uninstalled the game a couple of days ago because of too many issues and disappointments. Honestly, I gave up on the game.

So sad.

Unfortunately I’ve been slowly feeling the same way, there’s just so many little dissapointments adding up, along with the shallowness of the game I just find it hard to log in now and it feels horrible.

Huge WvW performance inconsistencies are one of the big ones.

FluffyDoe.7539:

because they’ll never just say “we are not implementing FOV because it will make our game lag”. That type of answer will hurt their marketing^

That’s basically what he said though.
1) performance suffers greatly because of how things are built and view distances

Habanero.9384:

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.

I share your view and experienced most of the mentioned issues in your post myself.
Followed the game since Comicom 2010, participated in every BWE/stresstest and played since headstart…
I came to the same conclusion; that technical limitations, questionable coding and some rock solid design decisions (I don’t like) are what made changes which will suffice to make the game playable (aka fun) for me very very unlikely…

Just like you I stopped playing.
I even uninstalled the game a couple of days ago because of too many issues and disappointments. Honestly, I gave up on the game.

So sad.

I haven’t given up yet, but this response by a dev is so disappointing. I had hope they would fix this, and i’m not so sure they will fix the camera related issues now. We’ll probably get another response telling us it’s not possible.

This is just stupid. I almost wanna buy a second copy of the game to use the fov tool with so I can play without worrying about losing my actual account.

nexxe.7081:

FluffyDoe.7539:

because they’ll never just say “we are not implementing FOV because it will make our game lag”. That type of answer will hurt their marketing^

That’s basically what he said though.
1) performance suffers greatly because of how things are built and view distances

But the point is ‘just saying’ the simple truth and nothing else…. yet what JP did was that he compared it to quake and HL, and that’s NEVER a good idea on forums. It’s like why there are millions of post response when you compare GW2 to WoW… same type of social pattern. Nitpicking goes on in forums more times and not, and sometimes a good post is a post that actually doesn’t focus on the small details and just one big-picture.

Big picture: Performance decrease.

Small picture: HL and Quake FOV is similar, so why y’all complaining…

FluffyDoe.7539:

Liberis.9573:

I don’t understand all these posts saying that the FOV is fine because “it doesn’t affect me” or “I haven’t noticed it”. Just because an issue doesn’t affect you, does not mean that the issue does not exist.

There are already 3rd party hacks that allow you to change the fov, which has alleviated the nausea issue for some people (without performance issues), so I don’t quite understand ArenaNet’s reasoning here.

Also, what about triple-monitor setups and manually resizing the game in windowed-mode?

It’s as if people don’t read the Dev’s comment properly at all here in the forums. John clearly said that the key reason why they haven’t considered increasing the FOV is because of lag, and people can read it as an excuse or what-not… but “LAG” is the bottom line.

If you read between the lines in all their performance post, you can tell that they’re having trouble optimizing the game; it’s not that they don’t want to give players FOV, it’s because their technology is ‘incapable’ of doing so. While you may take that as an excuse to deny the existence of this issue, it’s clearly just the reality of things when it comes down to it; you don’t know for sure why they don’t add FOV, because they’ll never just say “we are not implementing FOV because it will make our game lag”. This is what happens when game developers forget how to simply “tell the public the simple truth”. Comparing the game to HL or Quake is simply a poor response – that has clearly made people think that Anet is making excuses rather than stating facts.

I trust what they say, but it’s not like I have a choice other than to debate on these forums.

Yes. That’s pretty much how it is.
This games performes very poorly and is not fit for huge numbers of players as anyone can clearly see with WvW.
Optimization was announced since BWE1. Well…
Looks like we can’t have single-player-beauty with decent MMO-performance.
(a reminder the “MM” in MMO stands for MASSIVE-Multiplayer)

I wish you all the best!
Have an ale!

Very disappointing. Art is of course subjective but at least for me I can appreciate it much more when running higher FoV through windowed mode. The more I look at the picture with higher FoV when compared to one with the default, the more I can’t understand why we can’t have the option to alter it.

nexxe.7081:

Habanero.9384:

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.

I share your view and experienced most of the mentioned issues in your post myself.
Followed the game since Comicom 2010, participated in every BWE/stresstest and played since headstart…
I came to the same conclusion; that technical limitations, questionable coding and some rock solid design decisions (I don’t like) are what made changes which will suffice to make the game playable (aka fun) for me very very unlikely…

Just like you I stopped playing.
I even uninstalled the game a couple of days ago because of too many issues and disappointments. Honestly, I gave up on the game.

So sad.

I haven’t given up yet, but this response by a dev is so disappointing. I had hope they would fix this, and i’m not so sure they will fix the camera related issues now. We’ll probably get another response telling us it’s not possible.

I will look into forums from time to time.
Maybe I will re-install and play again some time in the far future.

Respect!

The idea that an option for higher FOV would cause crippling performance issues is proven false, both by the game itself during dragon events, and by the camera “hack tool” that lets you increase your FOV and by people with triple monitor setups. People with triple monitor setups do not experience crippling lag with higher FOV, nor do people that use the “camera hack” tool. So we know that is 100% false and is not even a valid reason for not implementing it whatsoever.

Drop this proven false myth that having an option for higher FOV would somehow cause crippling performance issues.

Personally, and I think it’s a perfect middle ground, give us settings between 75(default) and 90. If I thought that was too much to ask, I wouldn’t.

Hi Jon.
Let me offer a rebuke.
http://i.imgur.com/czv8b.jpg
That is all.

ANet should really look closer at this. Cuz THIS is what the game looks like when you try to look at something bigger than you.

Fanboys, like it or not, this is real and it’s killing the amazing art.

Right now the art IS ruined because of the FOV. The only thing you ever see is the stupid GROUND, all because of the HYPER LOW FOV.

This.

The current FoV is an insult to the people who built the game world. We spend 90% of the time looking at a small patch of ground because, to be able to see the horizon or anything above it (buildings, trees, etc.), we need to tilt the camera up so much that it becomes impossible to use any ground targeted skills (or even judge the distance of enemies properly). Plus our own character blocks half our view…

The current FoV is wrong for PC monitors (because people tend to sit close to those; it would be fine for consoles where people sit further away), gives people headaches, and doesn’t do the game art justice.

On top of that, it gives a huge advantage in PvP to wealthier players who can afford to play on multi-monitor setups, because it lets them increase the horizontal FoV (while still not doing justice to the buildings, trees, sky, etc., – things that would improve the game visually without giving the player any gameplay advantage – because the vertical FoV stays the same).

As to HL using a FoV of 75 degrees, here’s what Valve itself has to say:

Motion sickness : Smaller FOVs tend to exaggerate camera movement, whilst larger FOVs tend to minimise its effect on the image. Thus setting a wider FOV can sometimes help to reduce motion sickness during gameplay. If you are experiencing such problems in Half-Life 2, try changing the FOV to 90.

Arena Net is basically pushing people to use (potentially harmful) 3rd party tools (which already exist, and will change the camera FoV without any “crippling impact on performance”) because they refuse to add a simple FoV adjustment slider to the options menu, despite this being one of the main usability / health issues players have been pointing out since the beta weekends…

The bottom line is that players don’t really care if developers say that FOV won’t be changed because of technical limitations, lag, fps, we know better, whatever…
It simply does not matter – like AT ALL.
If some people feel physically sick they will NOT play the game. It does not matter what is the reason – they will not care – they can’t play so they won’t… simple as that.
I myself don’t have the problem with feeling sick but the current implementation of camera and FoV makes the game not enjoyable for me. I don’t really care whether the engine is not flexible enough or the devs know better what I want. I really do not care – I just can’t play the game at the current state.

All the people trying to provide reasons why some things are bad and how they could be better is really a gold vein for developers. Those are the people that like the game and are trying to influence its development – because they CARE. Even myself – if I write on these forums (even though my previous post was deleted by ANet because it was considered too offensive) means that I do care – I do like the game and I’d love it was more flexible to satisfy me (and others) in aspects like camera behavior.

At the end of the day if ANet says it can’t provide quite simple options like FoV slider which is PC standard for years now. Well … that’s sad… I’ll have to live with that… and spend my money on different entertainment…

I’d love a FoV slider, the game looks claustrophobic atm. Looking at those FoV hack screenshots, the game looks A LOT better with those higher FoVs

bwillb.2165:

Baxuz.1943:

Also, tellling him that you know how the game works better than the dev team is horribly arrogant.

I’m sorry, but in this case the players DO know how the game works better than the developer. For the kitten’s sake, there are points in the game where it already increases your FoV, such as dragon lieutenant fights and the penultimate personal story mission. And you know what? It. Works. GREAT. It works great, it looks great, it’s much more playable than the rest of the game.

In those points of the game, the game has been hard-coded not to fall apart. That’s why it looks great. But it was an after-thought, with a blog post to prove it.

There are already 3rd party hacks that allow you to change the fov, which has alleviated the nausea issue for some people (without performance issues). Also, what about triple-monitor setups and manually resizing the game in windowed-mode?

The 3rd party hacks induce artifacting and LoD and culling problems outside the default FoV. Hell, it happens all the time even without hacking the FoV. Clearly it’s a sign of bad coding. As for triple monitor setups and windowed mode, you are changing the aspect ratio with the FoV following. For some reason the game doesn’t like changing FoV on the standard ratio.

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

I’d say that a 3.8 ghz C2D, 4GB of ram and a HD6850 which runs all the latest games on a stable 60 fps on medium-high settings counts as “within spec”. There is no logical reason why I should have 15 FPS in the Black Citadel with no players around on medium-low details.

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?

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.

As multiple users have pointed out, you can alter your FOV by using 3 monitors or by adjusting your video card settings…both of which are supported by ANet.

Hughs.6549:

Hi Jon.
Let me offer a rebuke.
http://i.imgur.com/czv8b.jpg
That is all.

ANet should really look closer at this. Cuz THIS is what the game looks like when you try to look at something bigger than you.

Fanboys, like it or not, this is real and it’s killing the amazing art.

This is why I’ve started hating my asura. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

For those who keep tossing up the BS regarding performance decrease:

Core i5 @ 4.3GHz & 670GTX (More or less maxed out settings):

1920×1200 – 60 FoV: 73 FPS @ Arah Entrance
1920×1200 – 90 FoV: 67 FPS @ Arah Entrance

FoV values are calculated, it’s late and I’m not going to bother with that in this post.
73/67 = ~1.09 -> 9% FPS decrease

I don’t play PvP – I play Exploration Dungeons, 9% FPS decrease does NOT bother me.

I’ll say no more. I’m so disappointed of Arenanet I don’t even know what to say.

Edit1: The FoV was obtained using a high resolution monitor, not using any exploits.
Edit2: Camera was zoomed out as much as possible.

nexxe.7081:

That’s basically what he said though.
1) performance suffers greatly because of how things are built and view distances

Which is demonstrably false:

• People with 2 or 3 monitors already get a wider FoV.
• There is already a 3rd party tool to change the GW2 FoV.
• Boss fights already make the FoV wider.
• Several vistas also make the FoV wider.

None of them makes “performance suffer greatly” (naturally, using 3 monitors does require a graphics card capable of rendering 3x the number of pixels, but that’s a separate issue; it’s the extra screen area that requires added GPU power, not the increased FoV per se).

Baxuz.1943:

bwillb.2165:

Baxuz.1943:

Also, tellling him that you know how the game works better than the dev team is horribly arrogant.

I’m sorry, but in this case the players DO know how the game works better than the developer. For the kitten’s sake, there are points in the game where it already increases your FoV, such as dragon lieutenant fights and the penultimate personal story mission. And you know what? It. Works. GREAT. It works great, it looks great, it’s much more playable than the rest of the game.

In those points of the game, the game has been hard-coded not to fall apart. That’s why it looks great. But it was an after-thought, with a blog post to prove it.

What exactly do you suggest was changed in those parts of the game other than the FoV to get the FoV to work? If it were just the story mission I might buy this, but the dragon lieutenant fights take place in areas that are fully accessible outside of the event at default FoV.

In any case, I’d rather have a few stretched textures than look through a telescope for all of the gameplay.

What exactly do you suggest was changed in those parts of the game other than the FoV to get the FoV to work? If it were just the story mission I might buy this, but the dragon lieutenant fights take place in areas that are fully accessible outside of the event at default FoV.

I’ve no idea to be honest. My best guess is that they redid the areas where the boss fights take place, tweaking the shaders, doodads, models, collision, Umbra culling and the likes manually.
Also, I’m pretty sure that it’s not (just?) the FoV that was tweaked, but the camera distance and available angles.

This is very disappointing, i guess players will have to turn to the modding community for some decent support.

Maybe people should wait and see what the camera changes are before making judgments?

Jon, i don’t know if you’re stupid, or knowingly treating people who are not idiots as idiots, but you should really shut up regarding FOV.

None of your points are valid, at all.

You can push that kind of bullkitten on idiots who “code guis in visual basic”.

Thanks.

PS: I don’t like you already.

addhitman.8072:

This is very disappointing, i guess players will have to turn to the modding community for some decent support.

chances are any ‘modding communty’ action would result in a perma ban

I’ve no idea to be honest. My best guess is that they redid the areas where the boss fights take place, tweaking the shaders, doodads, models, collision, Umbra culling and the likes manually.

I don’t think they did much of anything. I support this claim with the fact that I can use an extremely widescreen resolution or a third-party tool to get the same higher FoV in the rest of the game with no issues. No massive performance drops, no stability drops, no giant holes in the world that suck everything in and divide by zero thereby breaking down the very fundamentals of existence and destroying all life on Tyria…

Maybe people should wait and see what the camera changes are before making judgments?

Why? He said it’s bugs in camera smoothing. That’s all. Camera smoothing shouldn’t even be there, but that really has nothing to do with the price of tea in China (or FoV, for that matter.)

I’m not satisfied with this response to the FoV issue, it seems like they’re avoiding it.

I honestly don’t think the art team was too concerned about gameplay when they made places like Caudecus’ Manor, where your camera is permanently glued to the back of your head because the rooms and hallways can barely hold a full sized norn or charr.

I don’t think they did much of anything. I support this claim with the fact that I can use an extremely widescreen resolution or a third-party tool to get the same higher FoV in the rest of the game with no issues. No massive performance drops, no stability drops, no giant holes in the world that suck everything in and divide by zero thereby breaking down the very fundamentals of existence and destroying all life on Tyria…

Well if that’s the case, the end result for me is the same: not playing the game till it gets fixed properly, but with the added bonus of losing respect for the devs.

As this thread has denigrated into arguing and personal attacks, it will now be locked.